


Deadwood

by partypaprika



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 13:47:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10742940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/partypaprika/pseuds/partypaprika
Summary: The war is over—everything can finally return to normal, or at least that's what David tells himself. He should be delighted to go home, ecstatic even. And yet, David finds himself throwing caution to the wind just to follow Joe on one last, absurd mission.





	Deadwood

**Author's Note:**

> A million thank yous to Jspringsteen who not only helped beta, but was also an amazing sounding board.

The remaining stragglers of Easy Company left France, and consequently the war, on a gray and chilly day near the end of November, departing from the bombed-out rubble that had once been Le Havre. There were only a dozen or so of the Easy men remaining in Europe—most everyone else had made their points over the past few months and the company had dwindled down until the last of the bunch had finally been approved to head home. Well, everyone except for Winters. He hadn’t been an Easy man for some time, but the war finally felt over when he was sent off to Germany to continue supervising the post-war efforts.

The army had packed the last of the Easy men, along with several thousand other soldiers, onto the USS _Lake Champlain_ , an Essex loaner filled with new recruits in awe of anyone that had seen actual action. For his part, David was so happy at the thought of actually returning home that he didn’t even mind the crammed quarters, the smell of several thousand men who showered infrequently or the fact that the food tasted like boiled rat.

“Boiled rat?” Joe said from the next bunk over. He gave Marty Goux across the aisle a look before he turned back to David. At well over six feet, Goux was crammed into his bunk, his feet hanging off the sides of the bunk. Goux gave a look back, his dark eyes and tanned face skeptical. “And how would you know what boiled rat tastes like?” Joe asked.

“Somehow,” David said, “I think that I can imagine it well enough without actually partaking of it.” He turned back to his book—he had traded some hawker in Le Havre for a book by Jean-Paul Sartre, getting gouged four cigarette packs in trade but unwilling to pass up the opportunity to get reading material for the transatlantic voyage. David’s poor French made for slow going, but it was interesting, if a bit pedantic. He had tried to be discreet about it on the first day, but then Joe had found it and promptly made fun of him, so David figured that there wasn’t much use in trying to pretend that he wasn’t reading it.

Joe made a dismissive sound. “At least boiled rat’s got some meat to it,” he said. “This is more like boiled shoe. I bet it just sits in your stomach until it rots.” Before David could dwell any further on that delightful image, Joe pulled out a deck of cards so worn it was impossible to make out the original design on the back.

“Gin?” Joe said, so David marked his spot in his book and sat up so that Joe could crawl into his bunk.

“Still preparing to go back for that college education?” Joe said as he settled himself across from David and nodded at David’s book. “They gonna give you a test on all those big words?”

“Well, seeing how these ones are in French, probably not,” David said as Joe began to deal. Joe snorted and looked up at the ceiling as if to say, _You see what I have to deal with_?

There wasn’t much else to do on the ship but play cards or get into fights. Joe had done his fair share of the latter before even he had gotten bored of it and traded for the deck of cards from one of the boys in the 82nd.  He had then proceeded to systematically beat everyone at poker until anyone with half a brain refused to play with him. David was slightly better at gin, but only barely, and yet Joe had still deemed David his most frequent victim.

“I still can’t believe that we’re going home,” Joe said, in the middle of the second round.

“I know. Home,” David said, remembering his last memory of his family: his mother hugging him tightly in goodbye as he got on the train to return back to base. As usual, his father had looked faintly disapproving as he had watched David leave—still angry that David had turned down a commission. “I haven’t seen my family since forty-three.”

“Forty-two,” Joe said. “When I got called up.” After a long pause in which Joe knocked and scored twenty-three points off of David’s hand before dealing a new hand out, Joe said, “My sisters both had kids while I was gone. One is almost three and the other is just a few months old.”

David whistled low. “Congratulations on being an uncle—are you going to teach them to be a card shark just like you?”

Joe looked up and smiled at David, a genuine flash, before being replaced by his normal smirk. “You should be so lucky.”

 

 

Everyone spent most of the trip across the Atlantic talking about what they would finally do when they got home. The overwhelming consensus seemed to involve women—with an even split along soldiers’ girls or mothers.

“I’m going straight for that apple pie my ma makes,” Goux said wistfully, his accent peaking through. “Or maybe sweet potato. Maybe both at the same time.”

“Obviously the apple pie first,” Joe said, giving Goux a disapproving look. “What are you? A heathen?”

“I think I’m going to take a shower until the hot water runs out,” Talbert said, across the way, returning from a non-com meeting.

“Yeah, you would,” Goux laughed. “Pretty boy.”

For David’s part, he’d spent the last three years thinking of home. Wanting to be home. But he couldn’t quite envision the moment when he walked through the door. His mother would probably be upstairs, getting ready for some event, and his dad would still be at work or in his study. Although maybe Tracy would be home, visiting from school for a few days, and David momentarily brightened at that thought.

“What about you?” David asked Joe. Joe had a cigarette in between his fingers, unlit but still mesmerizing to watch as he played with it, bringing it up to his mouth and then back down.

“I figure I’ll get a nice big meal from my ma, hugs from my sisters and little brother. I don’t know—the whole family up in my business. Probably a whole twenty-four hours of excitement at my return before my ma starts talking about how I’ll need to get married now that I’m back,” Joe said and Goux and Talbert started laughing it up, drawing out who they thought that Joe’d get saddled with.

And yet, when the USS Lake Champlain finally disembarked in Norfolk, they didn’t find any women waiting for them or even apple pie. Instead the announcement came over the loudspeakers that everyone was first being sent to the base until their discharges could be filled out and completed. David, along with half of the boat, groaned at the thought of being cooped up for another few days while the army processed what would have to be paperwork for thousands of men.

But even with some of the winds taken out of their sales, the current of excitement that had steadily increased since leaving France kept rising until the men were almost hysterical when the ship caught sight of land.

There was a scramble to get towards the starboard side as the Virginia coast came into view, scraps of color here and there in the countryside from the trees that hadn’t yet lost their leaves in the faint rolling hills. When the port became visible, long navy ships spreading out across the coast, it was hard to believe that this was home instead of just another stop in the war, but David kept reminding himself that this was it. This was their last destination.

Easy Company joined the mass of men on the upper decks, their remaining possessions that had made it through the war in their bags, as the ship sped closer and closer to the tangled mess of iron and concrete pressed against the deep Atlantic. 

A loud cheer went up when the ship stopped moving and the gangways went down. Almost immediately, there was an orderly crush of soldiers trying to be the first off, men pressing in on David from all sides and pushing him forward from behind until he himself went down the gangway, taking his first step back onto American soil.

All around David, men smiled and laughed, and he couldn’t help joining in—the excitement of returning home, to his country, contagious. And David felt a sense of jubilation for those first few steps onto land—he wasn’t the only one who paused when they got off the ship, trying to see if there was a noticeable difference. It was probably his imagination, but the air smelled different—salty and clean, like the first day at the beach on a vacation. But before he could attempt to analyze it further, someone pushed him from behind and David dutifully followed the rest of the crowd thronging through the streets with their bags.

At one point, David got separated from the rest of Easy, soldiers that he only half-recognized surrounding him, and he had the wild thought that this might have been the last time that he saw the other Easy men. A small bubble of panic welled up in David’s chest, but before it could balloon into something larger or more unwieldy, someone reached out to grab his arm and when David looked over, he saw Joe, a look of supreme annoyance on his face.

“Jeez, Web,” Joe said loudly as he towed David through the crowd, easily pushing his way through. “Abandoning us so quickly?” He turned back to look through the crowd before David could reply.

 

 

 

When they got to the base, there was good news and bad news. Good news: everyone was expected to get discharged over the next couple days. Bad news: everyone was expected to sit around watching the grass grow as the paperwork got processed. Or, as Joe said, “What, they expect us to sit here with our thumbs up our asses while they get their collective shit together?”

Inside the barracks, none of the guys, David included, even bothered unpacking. Instead they sat there, shooting the breeze, until Goux stood up suddenly. “That’s it—I can’t take anymore of just sitting around here with you jerks, I’m going out for a drink. If the army wants to kick me out now for having a cool one—I’ll take it.”

Goux threw a look over at Pepping, one of the older replacements who had managed to look small and freckled the entirety of his service during war. Pepping immediately was on his feet, smoothing down his red hair, trying to make himself presentable, but his hair refused to obey. Joe and Talbert stood up as well, both searching for their jackets. When Joe looked over at David, he glanced down at his book and then back up to him. “You coming or not, college boy?”

And David could see just in the reckless smile on Joe’s face that this night was going to be trouble, but he closed the book anyways and stood up.

“Lead on, fearless leader,” David said.

 

 

Fulfilling expectations spectacularly, the group ended up at a bar that had likely last seen good days when the previous war had been fought, if the faded pictures on the wall were anything to go by. It didn’t matter much, though, as what appeared to be half of the army had found the place as well, packing the place in and spilling out the front.

Talbert did the honors for the first round, bringing over beers to their group, all crammed up against the wall. It was too loud to have conversations as a group though and so David found himself talking to Vey another replacement. Vey had seen far more action than him but who, despite it all, was possibly the most easy-going guy in the company. He was about David’s height, but on the heavier side, especially considering that David was supporting most of Vey’s weight. Vey spent the evening getting increasingly drunk and emotional at the realization that once their discharge came though, it might be years, if ever, before he saw the rest of Easy again. It was only when Vey began to sob and David patted him awkwardly on the shoulder that David looked around and realized that somehow, Joe, who he’d last seen a few feet away and talking to Goux, had disappeared into the sea of brown uniforms in the bar.

“Hey, Talbert,” David said loudly a few times until Talbert turned around. “Here, your turn,” he said and passed off Vey to Talbert for safe-keeping. Talbert glared at David but accepted Vey’s proffered arm. Vey latched onto Talbert and began crying into his shoulder, although Talbert seemed to take it in stride and turned back to Pepping.

“Where’d Liebgott go?” Talbert asked.

David shrugged and gestured around the bar. “You think that I have any idea?”

Pepping pointed near the back of the bar. “I think I saw him head back there. Probably to hit the head,” he said.

Great, David thought. It was only a matter of time before Joe was getting himself into trouble. Likely of the fist and face kind. “I should probably go find him,” David said. “Before he embarrasses himself or the army.”

“I don’t know if this is any consolation, but since Goux is gone, at least they’re probably getting into trouble together,” Pepping said.

“Yeah,” David said and rolled his eyes. Someone had to save Liebgott from himself and apparently tonight that person was David, so he first went and checked out front where he found a mess of soldiers that weren’t Joe or Goux. David thought about just leaving Joe and Goux to their own mess before sighing and wading back through the sweaty and loud crowd to find the back of the bar.

Neither of the men were in the dingy men’s rooms or in the little hallway snaking around the back, but David reluctantly followed it to the end and pushed the door open into the chilly night air—which wasn’t all that bad, perfectly cool against his skin.

It took a few moments for David’s night vision to kick in and the noise from the bar to fade after he stepped out, so he couldn’t make out anything except the dim neon sign in the distance. When his eyes adjusted, David saw Liebgott and Goux hanging out near the end of the alley.

David opened his mouth to call out and rib them for making everyone else worry, but Joe and Goux were talking in low, fast voices, Joe making efficient and cut-off gestures as he said “Christ!” loudly and then went back to his point. They were so engrossed in their conversation that they hadn’t even heard David enter the alleyway, and suddenly David understood that whatever they were discussing—it was entirely their business.

David stood in his spot, knowing that he should turn around and let the two of them resolve whatever issue that they were discussing. But, his feet couldn’t or wouldn’t move, and he strained to hear what they were saying.

He was only able to catch hints of the conversation: “You can’t expect—when I thought—and tomorrow—” and then Goux reached out to grab Joe’s arm, which Joe clearly didn’t like and for a second, David thought that he’d have to step forward and separate the two of them before they got into a fight. But before he could do anything, someone else stepped forward not even five feet away from David—it was another soldier, who looked vaguely familiar, moderately tall and thick and barrel chested in the way that men from the heartland tended to be. He appeared so suddenly that David had no indication of where he’d come from. He hadn’t heard the door open, so the man must have been outside already, but then…wouldn’t David have seen him?

“Corporal Goux,” the man said loudly and instantly both Joe and Goux turned around. Joe’s eyes briefly flicked to David and he looked confused for a second before he turned to the other man and his eyes widened. David followed Joe’s lead and looked over to see the man holding a .38 revolver, muzzle pointed at Joe and Goux. Shit.

“Hey,” David said, keeping his voice deliberately calm although he felt anything but. “Let’s calm down here. There’s no need to have that out—we’re all getting discharged soon.”

“Web,” Joe said cautiously.

“Shut up,” the man—Lieutenant Mroz, David distantly put together, from the 82nd—said, his tone pleading and heavily slurred.

“Okay,” David agreed, but apparently that was the wrong thing to agree to because Lieutenant Mroz turned the gun on him before crossing the two steps’ distance between them. David acted instinctively, sure that Mroz was going to shoot him, and leaned low to take a rush at Mroz. For an infinitesimal moment, David could have laughed at the irony of dying here, stateside. But Mroz’s body tensed up for action instinctively and he moved towards David, the gun coming at David in an arc, almost in slow motion, and David could only keep moving forward in desperation.

There were a few seconds of haziness and then David next found himself on the ground, the side of his head numb. He felt something wet on his face, but when he wiped it off, his fingers came away covered with blood. Mroz looked down at David and his face was open and confused like he wasn’t sure how David had ended up on the ground. Something about this felt wrong to David, but his thoughts came too slowly and he couldn’t manage to puzzle anything out.

Joe, that idiot, tried to rush forward, crossing the distance to Mroz, but this was the exact situation that the army had spent so much time and effort training its men on and Mroz reacted automatically. He instantly focused on his target, slugging Joe hard. When Joe stumbled back, Mroz hit him with his gun and kneed him in the stomach, sending Joe straight to the ground. David began pushing himself up and yelled out to Mroz, trying to attract his attention, but Mroz didn’t seem to hear it. His attention stayed on Joe and he gave a kick to Joe’s kidneys, ensuring that Joe would stay down.

“Shit,” Mroz said slowly as Joe wheezed on the ground. Then, he turned the gun towards Goux who had stood there, frozen, this entire time.

“This is all you,” Mroz said. “You’ve done this.”

At that, Goux finally snapped to the present. “Vincent,” he said, his voice hard. “What do you think that you’re doing?”

Mroz laughed bleakly. “It’s Lieutenant Mroz to you,” he said. “But what do you care? You’ve ruined everything—you’ve destroyed my life.”

Goux started forward, only to be stopped by Mroz brandishing the gun. David painstakingly pushed himself up to a sitting position. Joe was barely moving, which meant that David was the Hail Mary here. “What life?” Goux said. “Pathetic.”

What on earth was Goux doing? He was pretty much daring Mroz to do something stupid.

“Everything here is your fault,” Mroz said, hiccupping slightly and taking a step towards Goux as Goux stepped back. David groped against the bar’s wall, trying to find purchase to pull himself up. “I’m done. If I’m going down, you’re going down too.” Mroz’s voice had taken on some confidence and for the first time, Goux looked concerned.

“Look, Mroz, it doesn’t need to be like this,” Goux said. “We can both forget that this happened.”

“No,” Mroz said. “It’s too late for that. You’ve made sure of that.”

“Hey,” Goux said, his voice going soft, placating. “I can make it so that it never happened.” Mroz kept stepping forward, his gun still trained on Goux. “I will make it up to you, I swear. Please, just don’t do anything. I promise,” Goux said, his voice starting to get more worried—perhaps as the reality of the situation started sinking in.

David’s legs reluctantly obeyed him as he managed to get to his feet, swaying woozily as the world went dark and blurry for another few seconds.

Mroz swayed there in the alley and David could read that he wanted to be persuaded. Good, David thought, Goux just needed to convince Mroz—tell him what he wanted to hear.

But then before David could open his mouth and shout, _Don’t!_ , Goux turned and tried to flee down the alleyway.

There was a loud, quick shot in the dark, the bullet leaving the gun to fly straight into Goux’ back. David had seen hundreds of people getting shot before, if not thousands, so there should have been no surprise, but it was a shock—the quick intake of breath, the muffled sound of someone slumping to the ground and a wet gasp.

Mroz seemed to be in shock as well, his mouth framed in a wide O and his hands trembling. For a moment he stood there, just watching without moving. But then David must have made some noise, because Mroz turned around to face David, gun pointed out at him.

“I’m sorry,” Mroz said, blankly. “I didn’t mean to.” Before David could say anything—think anything—there was a series of sounds from inside the building.

Mroz had the same thought as David: dozens of soldiers—some of them likely armed—would be pouring out of that building within a few seconds, and Mroz’ chances of escape were getting increasingly slim. So, without another word, he turned and ran, disappearing into the darkness.

David tried to take a step towards Joe and Goux, but upon moving away from the wall, his legs gave out and pitched him forward and back onto the ground as a bunch of men burst through the door.

“What the ever loving fuck?” someone yelled.

“Goux,” David said, or tried to say as his throat wasn’t at its finest. “Goux,” he managed louder. “Goux has just been shot.”

And then, suddenly, there really were dozens of men coming through the door—everyone screaming and yelling and everything faded to black.

 

 

Later, David found out that they’d searched for hours but Mroz had effectively disappeared. David had drifted in and out for a while, several people (or maybe the same person) talking to him in low, calming voices as they applied a field dressing to his head. Apparently one of the perks of being in the vicinity of a bunch of army medics.

David remembered that he had kept trying to stand up and walk until they told him about Joe and Goux. Joe was still alive and would likely be alright—he had two bruised ribs and a dislocated shoulder, in addition to the kidney contusions he’d received, but he’d survive them.

Goux—well, one of the medics broke it slowly to David that Goux had been DOA. Eventually, when the questions and adrenaline slowed down, there didn’t seem to be anything else to do except finally allow himself to pass out.

 

 

When David woke up, he was in a small, white room, early morning dawn beginning to creep through the window. The sheets were scratchy against his skin and someone had taken off his clothes and replaced it with a sterile and uncomfortable hospital gown.

Joe was there, passed out in one of those small plastic chairs, with his arm wrapped up in a sling. Despite the deep bags under his eyes, Joe snorted himself awake when David pushed himself upright.

“Jeez, Web, try and be careful here. You are in the hospital,” he said, but his voice was off, deadpan—like he was trying to inflect anger into his tone but had forgotten how.

“I’m fine,” David said automatically. Joe gestured up to his head and David reached up to feel a large strip of gauze, wrapped around his head. They’d also shaved part of David’s head, so he’d had stitches at the very least. Hopefully no surgery.

“How bad is yours?” David asked, and then instantly regretted his question at the look on Joe’s face.

“Oh, you know, some bruising and a dislocated shoulder, a pain, sure—but at least I’m not dead like Marty.”

David closed his eyes briefly. “I’m sorry,” he said eventually.

“What are you apologizing to me for?” Joe snapped and then stood up. “I’m still alive after all.”

“I—just—” David tried to get out.

“You know what?” Joe said. “Forget this.” And he stalked out before David could say anything else.

 

 

 

 

The hospital discharged David and Joe in the mid-morning after the police had visited the hospital and taken their statements. There’d been a small flurry of military personnel as well, taking their statements, asking questions that David didn’t know the answer to. When their doctor and nurses finally agreed that they could leave, Joe still wasn’t making eye contact with him even though David still wasn’t certain as to what exactly he’d said wrong.

A group of officers and non-coms met them back at the base, but Talbert detached himself from the group and took Joe and David aside. From the somber set to his lips, David knew that, impossibly, it was going to get worse. Talbert had volunteered himself to deliver this in place of some nameless officer. “I’m afraid that I don’t have good news for you,” he said and David watched Joe’s fists squeeze even tighter.

“You might as well just tell it to us now,” David said.

“Lieutenant Mroz is gone,” Talbert said and David looked over at Joe, but he’d turned his face away to stare at the clock on the wall. “We weren’t able to find him last night—and he’s either gone to ground or managed to leave the city.”

David didn’t say anything, knowing that more was coming. Eventually Talbert cleared his throat. “The army is working in connection with the local police, but due to the massive amount of manpower needed for the repatriation and demobilization, his pursuit can’t be the army’s priority right now.”

Joe swore, quietly under his breath, and David wanted to reach out and grab his good arm—do something—but instead kept his own arms tightly by his side.

“What about his mom? His brother? Is this not a priority to them?” Joe said.

“Look, Joe,” Talbert said. “I know that this is bullshit. One hundred percent bullshit. But I can’t make the army do anything.”

“Sir, yes, sir,”” Joe said, his voice unyielding, and Talbert sighed.

“You should both head back to the barracks,” Talbert said and it was an order phrased as a suggestion.

 

 

The military discharge took significantly longer than the medical one. If David hadn’t been especially enthused about waiting around to be discharged after the death of Goux, now it was excruciating. There really was nothing to do, except say goodbye to other soldiers, start planning a trip home and hope that the paperwork came through imminently. Or, if one was Joseph Liebgott, one could alternatively start getting worked up about everything from the order of the bunkbeds to the notification of Goux’s family and stay short-fused about everything.

It was clear that Talbert, Pepping and the other Easy guys saw what was going on, but were at just as much of a loss as David of how to deal with it. It wasn’t like David didn’t understand where Joe was coming from. After all, he had been there too, had replayed the moments over and over again in his head, wondering what he could have done to stop everything, before it all happened, turned a death into a harmful tirade before Mroz was led off for being three sheets to the wind—just one officer over-celebrating.

David also had time to wonder about the whys of the situation. Why had Mroz been upset in the first place? It had seemed surprisingly serious, far beyond a mere grudge. Why had Goux treated it so cavalierly? Why had Goux and Joe even been out in the alley in the first place?

But where, for David it was something to be mourned over and made peace with—like the many of the other deaths he’d grappled with—Joe took Goux’s death especially hard, the questions and vengeance forming a palpable aura around him.

When the news finally came down the day after their hospital discharge that Easy was part of the group of men being discharged the following morning, their whole room broke out in cheers and congratulations.

As had become automatic, David looked over to Joe, who had put on a smile, albeit a forced one, as he shook the hands of the other men in the room, giving meaningless responses and nods all around. It felt almost like a surreal nightmare—finally being discharged, but finding no real joy in it. As David went around, shaking hands and wishing everyone the best, his mind was on Joe instead of on the inevitable, jubilant return to his former life.

When most of the men filed out to grab dinner, David stayed behind, deliberately slowing his movements to get ready as he watched Joe out of the corner of his eye, who was standing stiffly in front of his trunk, his good hand in a tight fist by his side.

Suddenly, Joe leaned forward and kicked his trunk so hard it hit his bed loudly. “Jesus Christ,” he said, although David wasn’t sure who that was directed to. “Doesn’t anyone care that Goux died? Instead, everyone’s all discussing what type of dessert they’re going to eat.” Joe kicked the trunk one more time and sat down heavily on the bed.

David stood there in surprise for a moment before he recovered. Before he could second-guess the impulse, David moved over to Joe’s bed and carefully sat down next to him.

“Hey,” David said. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, Web,” Joe said. “Can’t you see that everything is just dandy?” If everything was fine, David would go ahead and shine the battalion’s boots for a week, but he strategically stayed silent. “How can they act like it’s no big deal? One of our own dies, but the brass doesn’t care enough about it to bring his killer to justice?”

“I know,” David said. “It’s horrible.”

“No, it’s not horrible. It’s a fucking travesty—if one of the officers had been shot, you can sure as hell bet that they’d be out there, trying to track down Mroz. Instead, because he’s an officer, the army is just going to let things lie. What bull crap.”

“They’re going to find him,” David said. “And, honestly, I think that if anyone died that was less than a four-star general, the army would still be too busy to devote the resources to hunting that person down. It’s a police issue, not a military one.”

Joe clenched his jaw and glared at David hard. “Fuck off, Web,” Joe said and sat up, David mirroring Joe’s movements. “Like you care anyways.”

“Of course I do,” David protested, but Joe was walking out the door, so David sighed and went to go find everyone else.

 

 

Joe skipped dinner that night, and David only saw him return to the room late, right before he went to sleep. David wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure what—how did one reassure a friend that something wasn’t their fault when they believed that it was?

 

 

When David woke up the next morning, he thought, _I am free_. But he didn’t feel free—any more free than he’d felt when he’d enlisted in the first place. As everyone else got up, the thought of discharge made the mood generally jubilant, although David half felt like he was going through the motions. Smiles on everyone’s faces. Everyone’s except for Joe’s. He looked tired and worn—bags under his eyes like he hadn’t slept well—and mouth drawn tight.

David let the idea that had come to him last night percolate through breakfast before he cornered Joe on the way back. “You’re going after him,” David said. It wasn’t an accusation, just a statement.

“What does it matter?” Joe asked.

“Joe,” David said. “You have no idea where this guy is. This is a complete goose chase.”

“If I have to go to every single motel in the United States to find this guy, I will do it,” Joe said. “Goux deserved that. I owe that to him.”

It was all laid bare before David—this could never just be the unfortunate death of an army friend to Joe. Because Joe had been there, been arguing with Goux seconds before, he felt responsible. And Joe would piss off the wrong person and be left outside some bar in the middle of Kansas, half beaten to death, or traverse the country until this bitterness ate him up and spit him out. Well, David had been there too. Whatever Joe felt, David could share the burden, or at least try to.

“He does deserve justice,” David said slowly.

When Joe looked over at David, he stopped suddenly. “No,” Joe said.

“No, what?” David asked, playing dumb.

“You know exactly what. I don’t need anyone else,” Joe hissed, grabbing David with his one good arm and bring him in close.  

“But wouldn’t two people be better here? Two brains are better than one?” David asked. Joe glared over at him. David met his gaze and held it until he thought that he might see actual steam come out of Joe’s ears.

“No,” Joe said again. “You can do whatever the fuck you want—but you cannot come with me.”

“Someone has to save you from yourself,” David said, but Joe had already turned and started walking away so David had to walk quickly to fall into step beside him.  

“What?” Joe said flatly.

“You are crazy. Certifiable,” David said. Joe stopped and stared at him, clearly at a loss for words. “But I’m coming with you. And ignoring the fact that you’ve forgotten our very recent history running highly dangerous and effective missions, I’ll remind you that I was there when this happened. He was my friend as well. And wherever you’re going—I want to help.”

Joe didn’t say anything. David decided to take it as a maybe.

 

Since Easy wasn’t due to receive their papers until eleven hundred hours, David headed over to the 82nd barracks. They were in a state of transit, people coming in and out, but David managed to track down one of the sergeants that he remembered. Sergeant Brunello’s slicked back brown hair, big ears and wiry frame was visible through the crowd as he supervised packing.

“Webster,” Brunello said when David approached. “It’s good to see you—I heard that you were roughed up.”

“Yeah,” David said. “At least they left my face alone.”

Brunello laughed loudly. “That they did. What can I do you for? I assume that you didn’t come all this way to coordinate our discharge.”

“I wanted to know what you could tell me about Lieutenant Mroz,” David said, lowering his voice.

Brunello froze up and quickly glanced to his left before he jerked his head and indicated that David should follow him.

“I heard what he did—I always knew that something was off about him,” Brunello said when they found a quieter corner.

“Yeah?” David said.

“Oh yeah,” Brunello said. He gave David a look. “He was a bit odd. Got that battlefield promotion in France, but never really fit in with the non-coms or the officers. Always kept to himself, before and afterwards. Good soldier though—top thinker, knew how to execute a plan.”

“Not cruel, though?” David asked. There hadn’t been a whole lot that David solidly knew about that night—so much of it was hazy in his head—but the image of Mroz’s tear-stained face had remained a puzzle.

Brunello shook his head. “Not cruel—or at least if he was, I never knew it. Just not someone you saw and thought to yourself, ‘There’s a man I want to know better.’”

“And with Goux? Did you know why he might want Goux dead? It seemed like there was something between them.”

Brunello shook his head. “No idea,” he said, shrugging.

“Well, thank you,” David said and reached out a hand which Brunello shook strongly.

“You take care of yourself, Webster,” he said.

“You too, Brunello,” David said, and waved goodbye to a few of the other men that he knew on his way out.

 

 

Back in the room, David stared at Joe as he packed up his bag, one-handed, until Joe threw a shirt into his bag forcefully and turned to glare at David.

“Fine, Web,” Joe said angrily. “You want to come, it’s your funeral.”

“I think I’d prefer to be cremated,” David said. “Simple memorial.”

Joe rolled his eyes, but the edge of his anger was gone and David felt a small swoop of success. “If you slow me down, I’m leaving you behind,” he said. But before either one of them could say anything else, Talbert entered the room, a stack of papers in hand. David felt his stomach drop and for once, he couldn’t say if it was with dread or excitement.

Talbot handed out the discharge papers and David’s eyes flicked down to the official seal and signature that released him from duty. Everyone started heading out, people reaching out to touch each other one last time. In a way, David felt like he was leaving his true family behind—but there wasn’t anything to be done for it except follow along and smile like everyone else, so David put a grin on his face and went to play his part as everyone filed through the base over to the bus departures.

 

 

Leaving the base should have felt like a relief—a return to normal, even though David could no longer remember much of what normality was like. Instead, it felt oddly bittersweet. As they passed through the brass gates in the bus headed for central Norfolk, David knew that it was a final farewell and allowed himself a moment to say goodbye to everything that he’d been and done over the past three years.

Beside David, Joe’s leg kept bouncing, nervous energy clearly flowing through him. Even though he knew that Joe wouldn’t take it well, David couldn’t help opening his mouth. “Are you alright?” he asked Joe.

Joe took a second to glare at him before turning back towards the dusty window. “Fine, Web,” he said in a gritted voice. “Although less likely to be so if you keep asking me stupid questions.”

David sighed, but didn’t say anything else until they arrived at the bus terminal. 

 

 

 

 

While Joe went and bought the bus tickets, David waited in line for one of the telephone booths. It felt weird to stand in line, everyone laughing and talking, the men in the booths smiles all around, while David couldn’t even muster up something other than the dim weight in his stomach.

Eventually it was his turn to make a call and he paused for a second on the threshold, wanting to turn back around. He was being ridiculous, David reminded himself, and forced himself into the booth. 

After the operator connected David through, the phone rang twice before someone picked it up. “Webster residence,” a warm voice said.

“Sophie,” David said, smiling. “This is David.”

“David!” Sophie said on the other line and then there was a long pause. David could see her clearly in his mind’s eye: her thick curly hair tied back into a bun, graying tendrils spilling out, while she also kept preparing lunch, taking vegetables out to be cut up. Maybe fresh fish waiting to be deboned sitting next to her on the counter.

When Sophie spoke next, David could hear her voice choked up. “David, it is so good to hear your voice. Let me go and get Mrs. Webster before I start crying right here in the kitchen.”

David heard her put the phone down and then it was quiet until his mother picked up. “David, darling, is it really you?” she asked and David could just make out the faintest undercurrent of emotion.

“Yes,” David said. “I’m calling from Norfolk, Virginia. We’ve just been discharged, but there’s some business that I need to take care of. It may be a few days before I’m able to make my way to New York.”

“Is that really necessary? Your father was looking forward to you being home,” his mother said and David pushed down the brief flare of annoyance.

“I’m afraid so,” David said. “It’s unavoidable. I’m afraid I can’t talk much right now—there’s a long line of other servicemen waiting, but please give my love to Father and Tracy.”

“Of course,” his mother said. David waited a moment for anything else and when it became clear that nothing was forthcoming, gently put the phone back into the receiver.

 

 

Joe caught David’s arm as he emerged from the phone booth, pulling him to the side. “Jeez Web, you going to take forever yakking someone’s ear off?”

“Just practicing for impressing you,” David said and for the first time since that horrible evening, Joe smiled, his mouth stretching wide before he caught himself and glared back at David.

“Yeah, you need all the practice you can get,” Joe said. “And you better stock up on food. Our bus to Cincinnati departs in forty-five minutes.”

“Cincinnati? What’s in Cincinnati?” David asked.

“Nothing,” Joe said. “But we’re getting out at Huntington, West Virginia.” West Virginia—probably, then, they would head up to Ohio to visit Mroz’s hometown. If Joe thought that Mroz would flee straight home, then that seemed more than a little optimistic. Plus, David figured, that would be the first place that the police checked. But it didn’t really matter what Joe’s reasons were in the end, so David headed to the bus café for a cup of coffee and a newspaper.

 

 

 

Unsurprisingly, the bus to Cincinnati was packed with soldiers, brown suits crammed into every available space and then some. Their bus driver, a man with bushy white eyebrows and an impressive barrel chest despite his age, carefully looked past the extra men on the bus as he collected everyone’s tickets.

For their part, Joe and David managed to grab two seats near the back of the bus and David took the window seat, feeling oddly excited to get on the road again. He pulled out his book, earning a groan from Joe that he ignored, and started to read.

The next thing that David knew, the bus went over a deep pothole, jolting him awake. So much for the coffee, David thought, and blinked the grogginess away. But he couldn’t feel too bad about it—Joe had fallen asleep as well, his head tipped onto David’s shoulder and his mouth slightly open.

They were somewhere near the border of West Virginia, Lexington and Charlottesville gone in the distance, although they had a few more hours to go. After a long look back at Joe, David leaned back against the window and closed his eyes again.

 

 

When the bus arrived in Huntington, early evening had just given way to night. A few other soldiers disembarked along with Joe and David, although David didn’t recognize any of them. The station was fairly busy with soldiers coming and going, and David and Joe lucked out, the bus to Columbus due to arrive within a few hours.

They bought some cheap sandwiches from one of the vendors near the station and settled inside the station to wait for the bus.

“Gin?” Joe asked, holding out his deck of cards. “Or we could do cribbage?”

Cribbage was another one that Joe was unfairly good at, but David was getting bored of gin, so he sighed and agreed to play. “You have to keep track of the score,” he told Joe.

“Yeah, yeah,” Joe said. “Although you might as well just accept that I’ll beat you by a lot.”

“That’s not great incentive for me to agree to play,” David said, but Joe had already started shuffling the cards and held out the deck for David. David rolled his eyes but cut the deck before handing it back to Joe.

 

 

They arrived in Wheelersburg mid-morning, fresh off a series of transfers. Wheelersburg was a sleepy-looking town, houses scrunched together, some in need of repair, as they lined the street and a dime store, drugstore and diner making up the majority of Main Street.

They ate in the diner, both ravenous. Their waitress, a young girl with braided brown hair who couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen, rattled off the menu as if she’d been doing this her entire life. She probably had. Joe charmed the waitress easily, getting information about where the Mroz’s lived, apparently a bit out of town.

“Although, only Mrs. Mroz lives there now,” the waitress said. “Mr. Mroz died a few years back.”

“Thank you,” Joe said, smiling up at her. The waitress blushed slightly and quickly turned away from the table. Of course Joe, that asshole, looked incredibly pleased with himself.

After their breakfast of eggs and plenty of coffee, Joe and David headed out to the Mroz’s property, following the directions given by their waitress. It was a walk of a little under an hour, but it was enjoyable, despite the late November chill.

Eventually, they found themselves on a small dirt road, bare farmland on either side of them. David wondered if Mrs. Mroz owned the land around her house and if it had been rented out while Mroz had been at war, or if it had simply lain fallow with no one to work it.

 

The small dirt road led to a ramshackle house, mismatched siding around the house, but with a neatly maintained garden out front. The steps up to the front porch creaked as David and Joe walked up. The middle stair caught and for a moment, David thought he would go through the stairs, but it held—at least long enough for David to get off it.

Joe knocked on the door and David felt anticipation rise as he heard someone moving around in the house, coming closer.

“Hello?” A tall woman opened the door, her face lined with wrinkles from working outside, and her hair well on its way to gray. She smiled at them, but it was pained.

For one horrible moment, David thought that he and Joe would have to tell Mrs. Mroz about her son, but when her eyes flicked down to their uniforms, lingering on Joe’s sling, she closed her eyes in pain.

“I suppose that you’re here about Vincent,” Mrs. Mroz said.

David nodded. “We apologize for bothering you, but yes, ma’am,” he said.

The pained smile returned for a moment and then she nodded. “Please, gentlemen, come on in.”

The front of the house had a small living area with a comfortable-looking couch and several chairs that Mrs. Mroz directed David and Joe to.

“Can I get you gentlemen something to eat or drink?” she asked.

“No, thank you,” Joe said. “We just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

“They told me what Vincent did,” Mrs. Mroz said. “But I know my son, he wouldn’t do that.”

David flicked his eyes over to Joe, tight-lipped and jaw tensed. “We’re just trying to figure out what happened,” David said, as kindly as he could.

Mrs. Mroz looked at David beseechingly. Her hands kept playing with the material of her dress before she settled on her knitting in a basket next to her chair. “He was always a sweet boy,” she said. “He would never have done something like what they’re saying.”

David changed tack. “Do you know if Lieutenant Mroz every mentioned a Sergeant Goux?” he asked.

Mrs. Mroz thought for a long moment—her hands fluttering nervously with her knitting. “You know, I’m afraid that I don’t remember hearing that before they told me,” Mrs. Mroz said. “But he mentioned a lot of his fellow soldiers in his letters. Goux may be in there.”

David shot a look at Joe, who didn’t miss a beat. “Do you have those letters? We should probably look through them,” Joe said immediately.

“Of course, let me go get them for you,” Mrs. Mroz said, carefully putting her knitting down and standing up.

“Thank you so much, ma’am,” Joe said as Mrs. Mroz disappeared into the next room.

“She thinks that we’re part of an official investigation,” David said quietly.

“Yes, Web, I figured that one out,” Joe said. “That’s good. We need to get those letters. She doesn’t know anything—but maybe there’s something in there.”

“You’re aware that you’re probably breaking at least five different federal laws, right?” David said, as casually as he could manage.

Joe shrugged. “Probably more,” he said.

“I don’t think that’s exactly reassuring,” David said. He could hear Mrs. Mroz coming back towards their room, so he restrained himself from saying anything else.

“Here are all of the letters,” Mrs. Mroz said. “I saved every one, you know. I didn’t know if…” she didn’t finish and David, unexpectedly, felt guilty. Or guiltier.

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Mroz,” David said, standing and taking the stack of letters from her. She’d tied the forty or so of the letters together with twine and David could see slanted and blocky writing peeking out. “We’ll do our best to return these when we’re done with them.” Joe glared daggers at David, but David ignored him as he shook Mrs. Mroz’ hand.

“Are you sure that you gentlemen don’t want anything to eat or drink? I’d hate to see you go back on the road on empty stomachs,” Mrs. Mroz said.

Joe looked to be in danger of answering in the affirmative, so David stepped in. “Thank you so much for the offer,” David said. “But we really do have to get back.” And Joe reluctantly followed David’s lead, standing up to shake Mrs. Mroz’ hand before following David out the front.

David risked one look back. Mrs. Mroz watched them from the porch, her face crestfallen. She must have thought that she’d finally get her son back, only to find out that she’d lost him all over again.

 

 

Back on the main street of Wheelersburg, David and Joe went back to the small diner for an early dinner.

“I’ll have the corned beef,” Joe said to their waitress, who seemed pleased to have them back. “And a coffee.”

“Same for me,” David said and, once their waitress turned to head back to the kitchen, took out the letters from his bag.

“Here, you take half and I’ll take half,” David said. Joe looked like he wanted to argue on principle, but mercifully kept his mouth closed. His right hand covered David’s for a second as he reached for his half before sliding down to grab the bundle firmly.

For one wild second, David could only think about the warmth of Joe’s hand on his, and then he had this crazy urge to apologize. He wasn’t exactly sure about what, but he had the distinct feeling that he’d done something he wasn’t supposed to, even though he hadn’t done anything at all.

“You going to sit there, twiddling your thumbs all day?” Joe prompted and David hastily opened up his first letter and began reading.

 

 

 

The letters were organized chronologically, and for the first couple letters, David didn’t find anything more interesting than noting that Mroz wasn’t a gifted writer. He’d started off as an enlisted man, just like David and Joe. He seemed resigned to his situation, proud to be serving with his group of men, but less enthused with the lack of privacy and constant companionship. Reading between the lines, David gathered that Mroz had kept himself apart from the other men—he took pride in his work, but didn’t seem to be as close as David had been with the men in his company.

David put the letters to the side when their dinners arrived—steaming corned beef that smelled heavenly. Joe quickly did the same and then they both proceeded to inhale their food. David hadn’t realized how hungry he was until food had been set down right in front of him.

“I vote that we eat meals more regularly,” David said and Joe nodded, eyes closed as he finished the last bites of his meal.

“For once, an idea that I’m entirely in agreement with,” Joe said.

“Have you found anything interesting?” David asked.

Joe made a face. “I’m not sure. He mentions Goux a few times—but it’s just in passing. It doesn’t sound like there was any bad blood between the two of them. Just some guy that he was friendly with from Easy. Most of his letters are about his company anyways.”

 

 

They turned back to the letters once their waitress took their plates away, although she poured them generous refills of coffee as they worked.

There were only one or two mentions of Goux in David’s stack and it was perfunctory at best. David couldn’t tease out any hidden meaning or emotion to it. Just another acquaintance. It was only after the 82nd moved to North Africa that he began to write with regularity of connecting with other men in his unit. He seemed to be close to Lieutenant Myers, even prior to his promotion, but they seemed to have become even closer after Mroz was promoted. Everything seemed to be Myers this or Myers that.

Finally, near the end of David’s stack of letters, in the middle of a passage describing how he and Myers had planned to meet up after the war—Mroz was to go and visit Myers—that everything clicked.

“Myers,” David said. Joe looked up, eyebrow raised.

“What about Myers?” Joe said.

“There was—” David started and then stumbled, unsure of what to say. Or how to say it. Maybe he wasn’t even reading it right—and that would be a terrible thing to say out loud if it wasn’t true. “Uh, Myers,” he said again.

Joe looked at David expectantly. “Yes, Myers,” he said. “What about him?”

David pushed the letter over towards Joe. Joe threw David a confused look but leaned down to read where David pointed.

“You think that this is where Mroz is?” Joe asked. “In,” Joe turned the letter to read it more closely. “Terre Haute, Indiana?” David tried not to wince at the pronunciation.

“No,” David said. “But I think that Myers probably knows something—more than his letters indicate. From the way that Mroz talks about Myers, they’re just—they’re just very close,” David eventually got out.

Joe frowned and paged through the letters in front of him. Near the middle, he pulled one out. “Myers gets mentioned a lot until this letter—this is where it stops. Actually, it’s where almost everything stops. After this point, all of the letters are very to the point. ‘Hey Ma, I’m alive, food isn’t too bad, I love you,’ you know. Something happened.”

David took a look through the letters—Joe was right. They were very perfunctory and off. Something had happened. But David wasn’t quite sure what it had been.

 

 

There was no chance of them catching a bus after dinner, the small bus stop’s schedule indicating that another bus wouldn’t be coming until at least the day. Their waitress directed them to a tourist camp just down the road.

Joe was quiet on the walk to the camp and David tried to walk through the letters. They’d given him more questions than answers: what had happened to Mroz in the war? Had he snapped at some point and then never gotten over it? Maybe it had been something else entirely—maybe Goux had been involved?

David didn’t know what to think. “Do you think that Goux was involved somehow in whatever changed the tone of Mroz’s letters?”

Joe looked up, lips pursed. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what it could have been. Maybe he was just shell-shocked, one of those guys who just lost it.”

“Yeah, but if he lost it halfway through the way, we would have known then. Not months and months later when he returned home,” David said.

Joe rolled his eyes. “I don’t know what made Mroz snap and turn on Goux, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Did Goux ever mention Mroz?” David asked.

“You don’t think that I would have mentioned it if he had?” Joe said. “Jeez, what kind of idiot do you think I am?”

“I’m just saying—maybe there was bad blood between them,” David said. “What were you guys arguing about?”

At that, Joe’s lips went even tighter. “None of your god damn business,” he said so vehemently that David almost took a step back before he caught himself. David tried to ignore the sting of Joe’s tone.

“Well, it could be my business if it’s related to finding Mroz or figuring out why he killed Goux,” David said, as calmly as he could manage.

“Yeah, well, it’s not,” Joe said. “So drop it. What were you doing out there anyways? Spying on a private conversation?”

“I was trying to find you guys to make sure that you weren’t getting into trouble,” David said, starting to feel angry at having to justify himself. “Although clearly my presence wasn’t enough to stop that.” It was childish to put it like that, but when Joe froze up for a moment before continuing to walk, David felt viciously pleased at provoking a reaction.

Joe stayed quiet though, just speeding up and forcing David to double time it to catch up. There wasn’t much that David hoped to get from pushing Joe about it right now, so he mentally earmarked the issue to think about later, and let silence fall between them.

 

 

The camp that they found wasn’t much to look at—roughly a dozen small cabins set up in a horseshoe configuration, trees spread in between the cabins to give the appearance of privacy. A middle-aged woman manned the small office and front cabin.

The proprietress, a Mrs. Denning, was more than helpful—once she saw David and Joe’s military uniforms and Joe’s bum arm, she went out of her way to thank them for their service, which made David and Joe both feel uncomfortable, although neither one of them turned down the toiletries and towels that she promised to bring along to their cabin.

“Over to the right, you’ll find the showers,” Mrs. Denning said and beamed at David as Joe had immediately headed to the far bed in the room in order to claim it. “And please let me know if you need anything,” she said. “Really, anything.”

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Denning,” David said, starting to close the door. “But I’m sure that we’ll be fine.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Joe said loftily from his corner—David was going to kill him.

“No, I think we’re good,” David said, imbuing as much finality into his voice as he could as he closed the door the rest of the way, Mrs. Denning’s winsome smile thankfully disappearing. Once he was sure that she had walked away from the cabin, David walked over towards Joe and punched him in his good shoulder.

“Ow, what’s that for?” Joe said.

“Oh, you know what that’s for,” David said. “There is nothing else that we need.”

“I don’t know,” Joe said, waggling his eyebrows at David. “Seems to me that the good lady of the grounds was offering you something in additional to normal board. Hey, I wouldn’t be so quick to say no if someone was offered that to me.”

Unbidden, the image came to David of that exact idea, and he felt his face heat up. He quickly turned away before Joe could see.

“Well, I guess that you have higher standards than the rest of us,” Joe said. “Let me know how that princess hunt goes.”

David rolled his eyes. “Yes, because clearly only an aristocratic familial background is going to satisfy my lust,” he said.

Joe let out a bark of laughter. “I knew it,” he said.

 

 

 

Once they’d undressed and turned out the lights, Joe fell asleep almost immediately, but David didn’t even feel tired. His mind kept circling back to Goux and Mroz. What did they have to do with each other? And Joe’s conversation with Goux—had it been connected in anyway? When it felt like David had played out every scenario he could think of and still couldn’t find anything that fit, he forced himself to think about something else. Anything else.

Of course, the only other topic to think about was life outside of the war. He was a free man—as of this morning. Free to live the rest of his life. But David had no idea what that entailed—or what it should entail—and that was almost worse to think about, not knowing something as fundamental as who he should be, so he shied away from it. He could give himself the luxury of a few days before having to confront what his life post-army would look like.

Eventually, David couldn’t stand looking up at the ceiling anymore, so he quietly got up and rummaged through Joe’s pack until he found Joe’s deck of cards. There was enough moonlight in the kitchenette area that David didn’t need to turn on any lights—although, from the way that Joe was sleeping, David would have bet that nothing short of an earthquake would wake him up.

David played solitaire until the sky began changing to the grayish pre-dawn light and Joe slowly lifted his head up and blinked a few times in David’s direction. Slowly, Joe sat up and yawned and David’s eyes were drawn to the movement and long expanse of skin before he forced himself back to his game.

“Deal me in,” Joe said, his voice gravelly. “Actually, I’m going to go wash up. Then deal me in.”

David rolled his eyes, but didn’t say no.

 

 

Joe returned about twenty minutes later, hair still wet, with a paper bag that he threw to David. When David opened it up, there were four biscuits in it.

“Where’d you get these?” David asked, reaching into the bag to grab one.

“Mrs. Denning said to say hi,” Joe said suggestively, making David groan. Joe headed to the kitchen and began rummaging around. “She also said that there’s coffee.” When David turned, Joe had managed to find the bag of coffee grounds and was pouring it out into the percolator.

When the coffee finished brewing, they played a few rounds of gin and ate the biscuits with their coffee. It was surprisingly domestic: Joe leaning back against the wall in his chair, cigarette placed behind his ear, and David enjoying the quiet and coffee. It had been a long time since he had just enjoyed a morning so casually—it felt like years and years. But eventually, when the sun was officially up and shining through the windows, Joe pushed his chair back to its normal position and stood up.

“Ready to head out?” he asked.

“Of course,” David said and stood up as well.

 

 

They caught a ride from a farmer who, as luck would have it, was headed towards Portsmouth, the nearest major station on the way to Indiana, cutting out at least a few hours of waiting around in the Wheelersburg bus station. David and Joe rode in the back, stuck in between scratchy bales of hay, but David found himself smiling at the feeling of the wind on his face. For the first time in a while, David felt close to peace, just happy to be in the moment.

“This is freedom,” David said to Joe.

“What?” Joe called over the wind.

“Freedom!” David said. Joe looked at David like he was crazy, but smiled as well.

 

 

They arrived in Portsmouth a little worse for the wear, with hair unruly and wrinkled clothes, but David couldn’t find it in himself to regret it. At a dingy bus station with paint flaking everywhere, they were able to find a map and plan out their route—first, they’d have to go to Indianapolis and then take another bus to St. Louis, stopping on the way there to get out at Haute Terre.

Since their bus wouldn’t arrive for a few hours, Joe and David walked around the town. There wasn’t much to see—a nice and stately looking city hall, neat houses with carefully maintained gardens and a host of stores on the main street.

“It’s weird, right?” Joe said as they walked.

“In what way?” David asked. It was weird in a lot of ways. Not one building had cracks from mortar shelling in its façade. There weren’t bullet holes marking up the buildings, evidence of when soldiers had come through the town, breaking in every door, trying to find the Germans before more of their men had been killed.

David had become used to the constancy of war—the hospital had felt like a brief dream or intermission before he had been thrust back into the fear and collateral damage that war was. Most of the people here had never experienced war. They’d read about it or seen it on the news reels, but war had been something that happened to their sons or husbands or fathers far away, across the Atlantic or Pacific.

Joe gave David a look—a bit like, _Come on, Web, don’t play dumb_ , but then said, “All this white paint and no bullet holes. My mind can’t quite believe it.”

“It’s like being back in the hospital,” David said. “I feel like I’m going to return back to the war at any moment and that this will just be some dream to remember.”

Neither talked for a while, just taking in the town, for better or worse, until they found an open grocery, which they both couldn’t resist going into. They spent some time in the little grocery store, getting some apples to eat later, and David couldn’t help but run his fingers over cans bearing names that he hadn’t seen in years: Heinz Baked Beans, K Spaghetti, Wattie’s Green Beans.

 

 

Their bus to Indianapolis was much less crowded than their bus from yesterday, although there was a good share of soldiers that nodded in greeting when they got on the bus. David deliberately took a seat near the middle, next to the window, because there was an empty row right behind him in case Joe wanted to stretch out. But, Joe took the seat next to David without hesitation, and the warmth of his arm pressed against David’s made something flare up inside David’s chest.

“Are you going to pass out again like last time?” Joe asked. David rolled his eyes but refrained from pointing out that Joe had fallen asleep too.

“Alright, deal me in,” David said. Joe moved to pull out his deck, his leg pressing up against David’s. But he didn’t move his leg back when he found his deck. David felt hyperaware of Joe’s body, but found that he didn’t want to move either. “Although I think you need to give me a larger handicap,” David said belatedly.

Joe just gave David a sharp smile that said everything David needed to know about how much he was going to lose.

 

 

The bus ride to Indianapolis was significantly less interesting than the bus ride from the day before. The land between Ohio and Indianapolis was largely farmland, the trees already bare and ready for winter. In an odd way, it reminded David of the Netherlands, the neat Dutch countryside still visible in his mind’s eye.

Eventually, the light started fading, the sky going through a ripple of color as the sun sank below the trees in the distance. Joe had fallen asleep again, but he woke up just before the sun disappeared. He looked outside contemplatively, and David wondered what memories this brought up for Joe. Not for the first time, David wondered why the two of them were really here. What secrets was Joe keeping? Why did he want to find Mroz so bad? They felt intertwined and just out of David’s reach, but David figured that they had time. In fact, they probably had all the time in the world.

 

 

At the Indianapolis bus station, the night manager informed David and Joe that they had just missed the last bus to St. Louis for twelve hours.

“What do you mean the next one isn’t coming until eight a.m.?” Joe said loudly, attracting the attention of some of the other customers at the stop.

“I’m sorry—the St. Louis bus leaves at seven-thirty p.m., on the dot,” the manager said firmly, in a way that implied he wasn’t sorry at all, and, if he could have gone back in time, would perhaps have tried to get it to leave earlier.

“Oh, that’s great,” Joe said. “Real great. Next you’re going to tell us that the morning bus is cancelled when we turn up in twelve hours.”

The manager frowned and David stepped in before things got more heated. “Can you recommend to us to a place where we can stay for the evening?”

The manager reluctantly directed David and Joe to a nearby hotel, a ratty building called the Westmount, over on 17th Street. They dropped off their bags in their tiny room, but Joe still had that mulish set to his lips, so David ignored all of Joe’s protests and dragged him to the first bar that they found.

Joe ignored David for the entirety of dinner, only making eye contact with him after their third round of beer arrived.

“I hate it,” Joe said quietly. “All this waiting. You know, after the army, that’s all I should really be good for, and yet…”

Yeah, David got it. “Waiting means that I have to think about what comes next,” he said. “Instead of doing.”

Joe sighed and rolled his eyes, forced as it was. “You’ve always got to overthink things. Come on, Web, try not to think so hard for a few hours,” he said, and then ordered another round of beer as if he was going to forcefully stop David from thinking if he could help it. And over the next few hours, Joe did his level best.

They finally stumbled back to the hotel when the owner of the bar kicked them out sometime around midnight. Throughout the evening, Joe had continued on through the maudlin stage of inebriation straight through to the slap-happy stage, and kept hiccupping through his laughter on the walk back.

“You know,” Joe said suddenly, a few blocks away from the hotel, “You’re alright, Webster.”

“Wow, thanks,” David said but when he went to push Joe’s good shoulder, he missed and started tipping over. Somehow, Joe managed to reach out quick enough to grab David and pull him up.

“You, my good friend, are drunk as a skunk,” Joe said delightedly. “Capital D, drunk.” As David struggled to regain his balance, Joe’s one good arm holding him tight, he thought that perhaps he had underestimated how drunk he was.

“Oh, like you’re any better?” David said. “Mister hiccup.” As if on cue, Joe hiccupped and tried to glare, but couldn’t put much heat into it.

“Yeah?” Joe said. “We’ll see who the hiccup master is when I drop you.”

That made absolutely no sense, but they both seemed to find it hilarious. Joe seemed to show no signs of actually dropping David, keeping him pressed close for a long moment. Slowly, Joe moved forward until David could feel Joe’s breath against his cheek. Joe started to lean in, impossibly managing to get even closer, and David could barely think of anything other than the warmth of Joe against him and the buzzing in his veins.

Out of nowhere, a loud police siren turned on and David and Joe jumped apart. David couldn’t bring himself to look up until the police siren had faded in the distance, and when he did, he saw that Joe was looking off into the alleyway, studiously avoiding his eyes. Something in David’s stomach dropped low, a lead brick sinking, and he felt suddenly exposed out here on the street.

“Come on,” Joe said gruffly after a minute. “It’s cold out here.” Normally, it would have been the perfect opportunity to rib Joe, but David couldn’t even muster up the words to say it.

 

 

Neither of them said much when they arrived back at their hotel, silently trudging through the hallways. Joe lay down straight onto the bed and David swallowed the urge to say anything about it.

When David climbed into bed, he looked over at Joe. Joe was rubbing his eyes, groggy and likely about thirty seconds away from sleep. “Goodnight,” David said.

Joe opened up his eyes and looked at David for a long moment. “Yeah, good night, Web,” he said, a careful distance in his voice, and then turned off the lamp next to him.

 

 

When David woke up, it was still pitch black outside, with only the neon sign across the way casting light into the room. His eyes felt gritty, like he’d slept in sand instead of a perfectly serviceable bed. Joe was still sleeping, sprawled out on top of his covers with all of his clothes on, and snoring loudly.

David closed his eyes and tried to get back to sleep, but after five minutes of looking at the back of his eyelids, he gave in to the inevitable and sat up and pushed the covers off. He turned on the bedside lamp and looked again over at Joe. His shirt had come untucked and had ridden up, revealing pale skin.

“Fuck,” David said quietly, putting his face into his hands. “Fuck.”

 

 

 

 

Joe woke up in a bad mood, but for once, David was in a worse one. “God, who pissed in your coffee?” Joe said at breakfast near the bus stop.

 _You_ , David wanted to say, but he just glared harder at his cup of coffee. He’d had a headache since sometime around dawn as his body realized that it would go yet another night without any real quantity of sleep.

“I need some Anacin,” David said. “I’m going to see if I can find a pharmacist around here. I’ll meet you at the station.” Before Joe could say anything, David stood up and put some money down on the counter for breakfast.

“Jesus Christ,” Joe muttered under his breath as David walked away. Some stupid, childish part of David wanted to stomp or slam the diner door, but he calmly controlled himself until he got outside. Only once he was out of sight of the diner did he let out a half-yell of frustration with the world—he wanted to throw something, maybe his bag, but eventually good sense won out and David cursed loudly before starting to walk again.

Apparently no one in this part of the city needed a pharmacist, because it took David forever to find a drug store. By the time he’d made his purchase of Anacin, he looked down at his watch and realized that he was in danger of missing the bus. David had maybe fifteen minutes, if he was lucky, to get back to the station, so he sprinted the entire way back. He skidded out to the bus terminal with five minutes to spare only to find Joe looking mutinous next to the bus door. As soon as Joe saw David come in, he turned and went onto the bus.

David felt guilty, which only made him feel even more irrationally angry, and after he showed the driver his ticket, he looked for any open seats, hoping that there would be at least one or two not near Joe. Of course, the only open seats were in the back of the bus, directly opposite or behind Joe, so David sucked it up and sat behind him.

Once he sat down and got situated, Joe turned around and hissed, “We almost missed the bus because of you.”

“Yeah, well, we didn’t,” David said, admittedly not his best response, and Joe just rolled his eyes and turned back around.

David spent most of the ride to Terre Haute staring at the back of Joe’s neck and deciding that the stretch of skin just below his hair line was infuriating. It lasted right up until David realized that Joe had no real obligation to wait for him, which managed to make David feel even more upset, although he recognized the additional anger as fueled by guilt. If he had missed the bus, theoretically Joe could have just gone to Terre Haute by himself. After all, he’d claimed that he wanted to do this alone anyways.

 _Great_ , David thought. _Just great._ He resisted the urge to kick at the back of Joe’s seat and went back to staring at the miles and miles of stupid-looking farmland until the frustration faded away completely to guilt.

 

 

Terre Haute was a reasonable sized town, just before the border of Illinois. Their bus pulled into the bus station barely long enough for Joe and David to disembark before it took off again in a cloud of dust, which whipped across David’s face in the cold.

David and Joe stood there for a long moment, and David thought about saying the words “I’m sorry,” but they wouldn’t come out, so he swallowed them. “Let’s start with the library—get Lieutenant Myers’ address,” he said instead.

Joe nodded once, stiffly, and opened his mouth once before closing it. “Yeah, sounds good.” David figured that was as much apology and forgiveness that either one of them was going to get.

 

 

 

Myers lived in a nice part of town, not dissimilar in appearance from where David had grown up: large houses with generous space around them, probably seen to by a host of caretakers. When David and Joe rang the doorbell, a slim older woman answered the door and, once Joe and David had introduced themselves, graciously took them inside to the front room filled with rococo furniture that wouldn’t have looked out of place at Versailles.

“Let me go and get Mrs. Myers,” the woman, a Mrs. Franklin, said, and then disappeared, leaving them sitting there, awkwardly, on the edge of the stuff cushions.

“Fancy,” Joe commented in a low voice to David. Before David could reply, an older woman, her beauty still evident, swept into the room. She had her hair pinned up and wore a muted green dress, and even though she looked nothing like David’s mother, for a moment, she reminded David so strongly of her, the back of his chest hurt.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said, her voice even but her face as still as glass, and David realized that she thought that they were here delivering bad news. But that didn’t make sense. She should know that everything was fine with her son. Myers had presumably left for home around the same time as David and Joe had left the base. Maybe even sooner. Either way, he should have sent word to his family about his return.

“Ma’am, your son is fine,” David said quickly. “We’re not here about that.” Mrs. Myers relaxed minutely, but Joe threw David a puzzled look, and then a look of comprehension flitted across his face.

“My name is David Webster. This is Joseph Liebgott. We actually came here to speak with your son,” David said. “But I gather that he’s not yet arrived home.”

Mrs. Myers looked confused and then shocked as comprehension fitted across her face. “No, he’s not. We hadn’t known that he would be heading home. The last letter that we received from him was about his departure from France.”

Whatever surprise that Mrs. Myers may have felt at finding out that her son had been discharged was quickly smothered. David and Joe exchanged a look. Before David could say anything else, a gangly teenager wearing dressage attire came down the front stairs loudly.

“Mother, do you think that James can drive me to the stables?” she said, putting on her coat as Joe and David stood up. “I’m going to be late.”

“Virginia,” Mrs. Myers said, warningly, and Virginia’s head flew up to take in David and Joe. “We have guests.” Virginia gave both of them a sheepish look. “Mr. Webster, Mr. Liebgott, this is my youngest, Virginia.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” David said, echoed by Joe. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time, ma’am. We’re just trying to find William. Do you know of any place that he might stop at prior to returning home?”

Mrs. Myers shook her head. “I’m afraid not. I would have expected him to come straight back to Terre Haute. He spoke of his longing to return home after the war at great length in his letters.”

“Are you sure? No other family members that may have been ill or friends that he thought he needed to stop at on his way home?” David asked.

“Positive,” Mrs. Myers said, her voice unyielding and steel-flinted. “I know that he would return here first, so I imagine that he likely is still waiting for his discharge.”

David looked over at Joe, but Joe’s poker face was up, making it impossible for David to get a read on him. “That’s probably it. Did he happen to mention a Lieutenant Mroz in his letters home to you?” David asked.

Mrs. Myers thought for a second. “I’m afraid that the name doesn’t sound familiar,” she said.

David wasn’t sure what else he could ask. He had a strong feeling that Mrs. Myers wouldn’t let them look at any letters—although based on David’s own experience with his mother, they would probably be of limited use anyways.

“Do you have a photo of William that you could spare?” Joe asked suddenly.

Mrs. Myers looked like she wanted to say no, but couldn’t think of a good enough reason to decline. “Certainly,” she said eventually and gave them a strained smile. “Please excuse me.”

While she was gone, Virginia looked at Joe and David with frank interest. “So, were you fighting with my brother?” she asked.

“We were in different battalions,” David said. “But we fought together in Europe, especially for the last six months or so.”

Virginia nodded.

“Do you think that—” she started to say and then cut herself off as Mrs. Myers came down the stairs with a wallet-sized portrait of Lieutenant Myers. “Gentlemen, here you are. Is there anything else that we can do for you?”

David knew a dismissal when he heard it, so he took the photo and thanked her sincerely. Joe did the same, a flat tone to his voice.

Mrs. Myers saw them out to the front door, Mrs. Franklin watching carefully in the background as Virginia waved goodbye. “Please let me know if you need anything else,” she said in a tone that implied anything but.

“Thank you again, Mrs. Myers,” David said and then turned around, Joe following his lead as they walked down the entrance path.

“So that was the kind of place that you grew up in?” Joe said when the door closed behind them. David thought about denying it, but nodded his head.

“Yeah, pretty similar. Going to the stables and everything,” David said.

Joe whistled. “A regular Vanderbilt,” he said, but it didn’t feel mean-spirited.

When they walked through the Myers’ front gate, surrounded on both sides by tall shrubs and trees, Joe drew David to the side. “Wait here a minute,” Joe said.

“For what?” David said.

“Just a hunch,” Joe said. “I think that Victoria—”

“Virginia,” David corrected. .

“Virginia knew something. She froze up when you talked about somewhere else that Myers might be.”

They didn’t have to wait very long. After five minutes or so, they saw a car coming down out of the driveway, Virginia in the back. David waved down the car and it obligingly stopped right in front of them, Virginia rolling down her window.

“Sorry to bother you, Miss Myers,” David said. “I just wanted to ask you if you had any ideas of where your brother might be.”

Virginia pursed her lips and looked hard at the two of them. “Do you think that he’ll come home?” she asked.

David paused, unsure of how to respond. “We don’t know,” Joe said in the interim. “We wanted to find him here, so if he’s not here…”

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “You know, the last time that I saw him, I was thirteen. My other brother, George, he’s in in the South Pacific—he left before Will.” Virginia stopped and made a face. “Alright, don’t tell Mother this, but he might be in California. I know that Mother said that he wanted to come back, but Will never really liked it here. When we were kids, we would always play that we were tramps and run away to California. He wanted to move out of Terre Haute after the war—or at least that’s what he said to me. In his letters, he talked about someday moving out West, once he got back. He said that he would take me with him and we could move to Los Angeles. Near the beach. It always sounded a million times better than boring Terre Haute.”

David looked at Joe to gauge his reaction. “Thank you,” Joe said seriously.

“Just—if you find him. Tell him to write me a letter. I miss him,” Virginia said. She paused for a long moment and then shook herself. “I have to go now or else I’ll be really late, but…I hope you find him.” She waved goodbye to David and Joe and then her driver took off, presumably heading to the stables. David wondered if she would have been so helpful if she’d known why they were looking to find her brother. Probably not—and that knowledge made David feel vaguely dirty, like he needed a hot shower to get clean.

“Did you have a car and driver too?” Joe asked, bringing David back to the present.

“I’m not going to answer that,” David said, and Joe laughed.

 

 

 

“Alright, Los Angeles,” Joe said, once they got back to the bus stop. David looked through the timetables and groaned at the mess of schedules. They would first need to catch a bus to St. Louis. Then the fastest route to Los Angeles from St. Louis would be through Dallas and San Antonio before Los Angeles. There were other routes, but they would be even longer.

“It’s going to take us at least four days to get there,” David said.

“And?” Joe asked.

“And we don’t know anything else about where Myers might be in Los Angeles, other than that he wanted to be near the beach. We don’t even know if he’ll have any information about Mroz.”

“And?” Joe said.

“I’m just laying out the path,” David said. “Presenting our terrain and chance of success. So far we have one lead. One. And we have no idea of he knows anything. If we manage to find him in Los Angeles—which will be no mean feat considering how large of a city it is—then we still have no idea what kind of information we can get from him. He may not even have any idea where Mroz has gone.”

“And that’s it?” Joe said. “Because it’s not all laid out for you to follow, it’s too difficult and you’re going to give up? Well, excuse me for not accepting defeat at the first sign of trouble.” Joe didn’t look away from David. His whole body had tensed up and he looked ready for a fight—glorious in his anger. “I’ve always said that I don’t need you to do this. I’m seeing this to the end no matter what.”

This was futile. Completely pointless, and yet Joe was clearly ready to go ahead and run himself ragged for the smallest hint. Was it really just a desire for justice that motivated him? “What are you,” David started and then chickened out halfway through. “What are you being dramatic about? You know that I’m coming. I just—I just wanted to be clear about the odds that we’re facing,” David said.

“Noted,” Joe said. “You know what, I need to go and get—get some coffee.” And Joe turned around and left with his bag, leaving David with the timetables.

David sighed and started to flip through them, digging a notebook out of his bag to write down the schedules.

 

 

When Joe came back, he seemed calmer, if still tense, and neither one of them brought up the fight.

“I’ve got a schedule planned out,” David said, showing Joe his work.

“Looks good,” Joe said after he read through it. “Gets us there in one piece. Knew that Harvard education was good for something.”

David rolled his eyes, but felt something inside settle slightly, and the undercurrent of stress and concern that always seemed to be behind his ribcage lessened somewhat.

For the first leg, the two of them caught a late afternoon bus to St. Louis, getting on just as the evening settled. Their best bet for California was a morning bus to Dallas, so they found another hotel to stay in, a place with cracked paint and neon lights outside that would have made David’s mother weep to think about but suited their purposes just fine.

On the recommendation of their pimple-faced clerk, they went to a bar-b-que restaurant for dinner. David had never had bar-b-que before and neither had Joe, and at first they both looked dubiously at the generously slathered pork ribs when they arrived.

“Well, can’t be worse than Malarkey’s horse shit,” Joe said eventually and picked one up, so David followed suit.

It was shockingly, outrageously delicious and David couldn’t stop watching Joe as he licked his fingers clean after each rib. They ended up asking the waitress for another order and when they finished, David felt full enough for three meals, but couldn’t bring himself to regret it. Even if his shirt now needed a good washing and he’d probably traumatized all of the other people in the restaurant with his poor dinner manners. Judging by the look on Joe’s face, he was regret-free as well.

Stuffed to the gills and starting to feel sleepy, David was ready to call it quits and head back to the hotel in order. But, of course, after they paid the bill, Joe got that look in his eyes.

“Let’s go find a bar,” he said.

“We have to get up pretty early tomorrow,” David said.

“Is that a no?” Joe asked. “Wimping out on me?”

David rolled his eyes. It was always a challenge. Never a request: _Hey David, I want to go to a bar—do you want to come with me?_ “I didn’t say no. It was just an observation,” he said. At Joe’s expectant look, David said, “Fine. Let’s go find a bar.”

When they found one, a dingy place packed pretty full with loud music playing from somewhere inside, Joe began buying drinks like he was on a mission to get blindingly drunk. David followed, along for the ride, until he was so drunk that he could barely focus on anything else except Joe’s lips each time he brought his bottle of beer to his mouth. But if Joe noticed where David was staring, he didn’t say anything, instead handing David drink after drink.  

Even though it was cold outside, the bar was hot, almost unbearably so, and each drink that David threw back felt nice and frosty against David’s throat. Joe, next to David, looked cool as could be, his eyes bright as he talked, and David wanted to reach out and pull Joe in close, let Joe cool him down, stop this fever burning up behind his temples.

When Joe leaned in, staying a few inches away from David, it wasn’t quite close enough—David wanted to be even closer. Suddenly, David had the hazy thought that Joe was the secret to everything. To feeling right, to cooling down, to everything. And yet every time that David tried to say this out loud, explain it in a way that made sense to Joe, Joe looked like he was trying hard not to laugh, clearly not understanding anything at all.

When the bar finally closed down, they were unceremoniously shepherded out into the freezing weather. The cold hit David like a half-gallon of coffee, sobering him up quickly and making the alcoholic haze recede into the distance. When he finally stopped shivering enough to glance over at Joe, he saw that even though Joe had consumed enough alcohol to sedate a large horse, he was looking at David with something that David would normally have called intent. With focus. Maybe Joe had been on a mission tonight.

“Hold on,” Joe said, even though they hadn’t gone anywhere. “I need a cigarette.” He fished around in his pockets, his good arm bent awkwardly, until he found his pack in the opposite pocket and pulled one out. The rest of the crowd was quickly dispersing into the muted evening fog and when David and Joe set out, they quickly were alone, just the two of them on the dimly lit St. Louis streets. 

A block away from their hotel, Joe said, “Wait,” his voice was low and hoarse and it sent shivers down David’s spine. David couldn’t have disobeyed even he’d wanted to. When Joe reeled David in, it felt like inevitability, and although David knew it was wrong to want Joe the way that he did, he leaned in to kiss Joe.

Joe gasped, or maybe it was David, and then Joe surged forward, kissing David hard, furious and forceful. David pushed Joe back to the wall, careful of his sling, and took a moment to marvel at Joe beneath him. Joe panted, loud in the night, and stared up at David—half challenging, half vulnerable—until David leaned in, unable to call forth any common sense.

They kissed until David’s lips felt half bitten, consumed in the best possible way, and then Joe flipped David, the wall rough. It hurt where the brick bit against his back, but it grounded David in the moment and reminded him that it was real, that this wasn’t some fevered war dream.

Eventually, David pulled back, and there was a gratifying moment where Joe chased David’s lips, insistent, only stopping when David pushed him back.

“We have a perfectly serviceable room about four hundred feet away,” David said.

Joe flashed a cocky grin. “Yeah, and?” David didn’t say anything, just tried to muster some willpower. “Fine,” Joe said, but he leaned back towards David instead, capturing David for another kiss. 

 

 

 

 

They must have made the walk back in reasonable fashion, as neither was arrested for indecent behavior, but David couldn’t remember any of it—he was only aware of the distance between the two of them and the tantalizing feeling when their hands happened to brush against each other as they walked.

David unlocked the door to their room on the second try—his fingers uncooperative on the first—and once he closed the door behind the two of them, Joe pushed him against the wall and began pulling out David’s shirt and undershirt.

David tried to do the same, but he couldn’t seem to focus on anything but kissing Joe back and pulling Joe closer. David felt desperate and when Joe moved down to suck and bite at David’s neck and shoulder, David felt like he’d been electrocuted with a line of pure arousal whenever Joe’s stubble rubbed against David’s skin.

Somehow they made it to one of the beds and then their clothes were off faster than David had thought possible. Joe leaned over him, bracketing him in, before reaching down to take both of them in hand. At that, David moaned so loudly that Joe froze up and shoved his bad hand over David’s mouth.

“Shh,” Joe said quietly. “You want to wake everyone on the block up?”

“Sorry,” David said, but Joe sat back on his knees to get better leverage, carefully removing his bad hand from covering David’s mouth, as he returned to stroking the two of them. It was almost indescribable: the friction of Joe’s hand that was the perfect side of painful, the little hitches in Joe’s breath as he got closer and the knowledge that this was Joe—Joe, who David had felt an attraction in one form or another since they’d maybe first met at Toccoa.

Joe came first, leaving a mess on his hand and David’s chest. “Come on, Web,” Joe said, his hand dragging through his mess and then returning to stroke David. It was just enough to act as a lubricant and hot as hell—David made it through a few more strokes and then he came as well, his orgasm hitting him hard. Joe collapsed next to him, both of them panting.

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes, just trying to catch their breaths and then abruptly, Joe got up and went into the bathroom. While he was in there—presumably washing up—David’s brain went back on track and the repercussions of what they’d just done started to sink in. God, if his parents knew—or if anyone else knew—it was dangerous just to be—holy fuck.

“Jeez Web, stop thinking so hard,” Joe said as he came back from the bathroom. He had a hand towel and passed it over to David to clean himself up. When he was done, Joe awkwardly stood next to David’s bed for a second before he leaned down to pull the covers back and climb into it.

They lay side by side and David focused on breathing in and out instead of on the fact that Joe was less than two inches away. After about five minutes, Joe grumbled, “God, you’re such a pain.” He pulled David in so that his head rested right over Joe’s shoulder and David threw caution to the wind and let his arm rest over Joe’s chest, delighting in the feel of his skin. “Go to sleep,” Joe said quietly.

And oddly enough, even though it should have been the last thing that David was capable of, he closed his eyes and felt himself drifting away.

 

 

David slept poorly, dreaming over and over again about reaching out for something that wasn’t there in the darkness. Then, he was at Berchtesgaden again, green scenery and bucolic mountains. It had been beautiful—it should have been a peaceful place and for a long moment, David just wanted to sit down and feel the sun on his face.

But David was there on a mission, Joe frowning and asking David why he had to keep questioning his orders.

“This is what we are supposed to do,” Joe said, firm.

“But why?” David kept asking, but Joe didn’t listen, handing David a gun.

“It’s time,” Joe said and this time David shot the SS officer in the back as he fled from the house. He didn’t think twice about pulling the trigger, Joe’s words low against David’s ear. And then the SS officer was back, his face open and his hands reaching out as David shot him, blood spilling from the officer’s mouth as he fell to the ground. Then he was back again, closer, David shooting him as he kept walking, the bullets not stopping him. Again and again and again until David finally wrenched himself awake, dry-mouthed and heart pumping.

Next to David, Joe lay sprawled out on the bed, his mouth partially open. It didn’t take a genius to decipher David’s dream—there were too many variables here with Joe. David didn’t know what Joe was really after or why. David knew for a fact that Joe was hiding things about him—especially about Goux. And David had clearly shown a willingness to throw good judgment to the wind around Joe.

The smart thing to do here was to walk away. Just quietly ease out of bed—buy the next ticket home and forget this ever occurred. That was what David should do. But as David watched Joe breathe evenly in the faint moonlight, he felt powerless to leave. And so, eventually, David lay back down, keeping a careful distance between himself and Joe, and managed to go back to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Their bus was due to depart at seven a.m. sharp, and David woke up at 6:30 a.m. on the dot, blinding hangover in place. His head throbbed painfully and every limb of his body expressed its extreme anger that he had decided to drink his weight in beer. But Joe was also pressed up against him, holding him loosely, and in the light of day, nightmare faded away, David couldn’t bring himself to regret any of it.

David gave himself thirty seconds to lie there before he sat up and shook Joe awake. Joe woke up all at once and when he saw David, he smiled half-crookedly, making something inside of his chest clench. Then Joe grimaced and groaned, bringing his hand up to his temple. “There’s a whole firing squad in here,” Joe said, then looked over at the clock and groaned even louder. “Shit, we’re going to be late.”

 

 

They weren’t late, but it was a close call between throwing their clothes in their bags, brushing their teeth, handing over their key at the hotel and buying tickets for the bus. When they finally got into their seats, Joe looked a little green around the gills and David wasn’t sure he looked any better.

“Here,” he said, pulling out his bottle of aspirin.

“Oh, thank god,” Joe said, gulping a few pills down. David forced any fond feelings that he had back down into his chest and leaned against the window to try and catch a little more shut-eye.

When David woke up, it was mid-day, bright light pouring through the bus. He felt a little tacky from his nap and the crush of the morning, but now that his headache was gone, he felt at ease. Almost happy.

“Oh good, you’re up,” Joe said next to him. “I tried reading your book and it is boring as hell.”

“The Sartre book?” David asked. Joe gave him a challenging look.  David didn’t think that Joe’s French was all that great—but he was not touching that with a ten foot pole. “I thought it was pretty long-winded too. Those French, right?”

Joe gave his own sigh at _those French_ , but didn’t pursue the opening. David stretched out a little, letting his arm linger next to Joe before he settled back into the seat. “How much longer do we have until our next stop?” David asked.

“Two hours,” Joe said. “And I’m hungry enough to eat a horse. Cards?”

David was even feeling in a good enough mood to let Joe beat the crap out of him at poker.

It was a sweet kind of torture, sitting on the bus, pressed against Joe, with the memory of last night burned into his brain. David wanted more of it—half wanted to kiss Joe here on the bus, even though it was possibly the worst idea that he could have thought of—but he had no frame of reference for where Joe was. Did he regret it all? He couldn’t have; the smile that he’d given David that morning said that Joe had felt something for him as well.

But, maybe in the light of day, it was different. It wasn’t—it wasn’t something that David should want. Or feel. And yet, it was there all the same. The feeling of Joe’s hand solidly gripping him, the firm press of his lips against David’s, the rough bites down his chest. And, with Joe next to him, David couldn’t help but dream about doing it again.

 

 

 

When they finally arrived in Dallas, it was well after midnight, although the air was just barely a reasonable temperature. Since they weren’t continuing on the bus to Houston, David and Joe disembarked with a host of other fellow travelers and followed the majority of the group to one of the hotels nearby.

As David negotiated a rate for the room, he snuck a glance at Joe, wondering if they would have a repeat of last night. Joe, for his part, looked completely nonchalant as he made conversation with one of the other travelers waiting to get a room as well.

“Joe, got a room,” David said loudly.

Joe flashed the guy a smile and then jogged to catch up with David. “You in a hurry or something?” Joe said, teasingly when he caught up. David glared at Joe, which only made Joe smile harder.

 

 

When David opened the door, he waited until Joe came in and closed the door before he crowded up against him. “Yeah, I would say that I’m in a hurry,” David said and he leaned in until he was almost touching Joe.

Joe broke first, tugging David in, and then everything was a blur of lips and rough kisses until they made their way to the bed and undressed each other. The previous night, David had been too drunk to appreciate any of this, so when Joe made a move to speed things up, he pulled back and let himself just look at Joe.

“Web, what are you doing?” Joe said, fidgeting slightly

“Looking,” David said, but ran his hands up Joe’s side, careful of the sling and Joe’s arm pressed in closely. Joe shivered slightly, and David leaned in to kiss the juncture of his neck and shoulder as Joe made breathy, cut-off noises below him. This time, David took a deep breath and moved down Joe’s body. “Be careful,” he said quietly, and then slowly took Joe’s cock into his mouth.

Joe groaned, deep and guttural, and David could feel the minute trembles in Joe’s thighs as he forced himself to keep still. He wasn’t exactly experienced at this, but he took his time, trying to think about what he liked—Joe didn’t seem to have any complaints. At some point, Joe managed to bite out, “I’m going to—I’m—oh god,” and David pulled back just in time for Joe to come all over David’s hand.

Joe lay there, a look of utter bliss on his face for a few seconds, until David cleared his throat. Joe cracked an eye open and gave him a wicked smile.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Joe said. “I’ve got you.” Joe pushed himself up and then manhandled David up against the wall before he leaned down and took David’s cock in his mouth. From what David could tell, Joe didn’t appear to be all that much more experienced than David, but it didn’t matter—not at all—because it felt amazing, like he had died and gone to heaven, because he never wanted the hot, glorious heat of Joe’s mouth around his cock to end.

All too soon, the rush started building up and David knew that he was going to come. “I’m close,” he gritted out. “I’m going to—” but Joe just took him deeper, swallowing when David came. When he’d finished, Joe looked at David challengingly with a smirk on his face as if there’d been a race and he had won it by swallowing.

“Of course, you’d be competitive about that,” David said. He never wanted to move again, but Joe was eyeing the spot where David had wiped his hand earlier.

“Other bed,” Joe said decisively and looked at him expectantly. It gave David a little thrill to know that Joe expected that they would sleep together, but he tried to play it off as cool as he could.

“Fine,” David said and followed Joe over to the other bed. This time, Joe didn’t wait for David in order to get comfortable. Joe pulled David in close, and David tucked his head just over Joe’s shoulder, slotting their bodies together.

They were both asleep within minutes.

 

 

 

The next morning almost qualified as a lazy morning—both of them waking up slowly, sun shifting through the window blinds, since they had enough time before their next bus left. They exchanged languid kisses until it built up into something more, something with intent, Joe grinding up against David’s hip and stroking David. When they both came, Joe bit down hard enough on David’s shoulder that it left a red and purple mark that David stared at for a few minutes in the bathroom. Eventually, he shook himself out of it and showered, but it felt like a hidden brand, binding him to Joe, when they left the hotel.

 

 

It was easy to feel like this day was just a subtle continuation of the next as they got onto another bus. Today was more of Texas—David hadn’t been able to see much of Texas the night before since the fields of the Midwest had slowly faded into darkness before they hit the desert, so he spent the ride to San Antonio marveling at the wide open spaces and red-brown dust that extended out to the horizon. Even Joe found it interesting, leaning over David to look outside, his arm pushed up on David’s shoulder, anchoring the two of them together.

 

 

San Antonio was a dusty red town that rose up out of the desert to meet them. It didn’t seem particularly interesting, but they had a few hours to kill before the bus for Los Angeles left from San Antonio, so they grabbed lunch at a greasy spoon a few blocks away from the bus station. It was packed with people, which seemed as high of a recommendation as any, and the wait wasn’t bad. Just like Dallas, San Antonio was warmer than the Midwest, so it was nice to be outside, stretching in the sun. And, once they got inside, the food turned out to be worth the wait anyway: the creamed chipped beef and mashed potatoes were as delicious as David had hoped for.

As they walked back to the bus station, David realized that he was actually happy. Genuinely, smile-on-his-face, sunny day happy. He could imagine the two of them doing this in the future—obviously not on some insane goose hunt—but traveling together, eating good food, just being near one another.

 

 

 

From San Antonio, they officially started making their way west—their bus headed straight for Los Angeles. There was a feeling of excitement on the bus, as if everyone else also had something waiting for them on the coast—maybe just dreams of sunshine and beaches, maybe something else. The land of opportunity.

“How long has your family been in California?” David asked Joe. Joe looked surprised that David even remembered that he was a Californian.

“We moved there when I was a kid. Probably about fifteen years ago? My ma had some family out there, so that’s where we went,” Joe said.

“Do you like it out there? Is that where you want to live?” David asked.

Joe shrugged awkwardly. “Yeah, it’s fine. Good weather, not as cold as other places. And I don’t know—I hadn’t really given it much thought. I’ll probably end up wherever there’s decent jobs.” After a long pause, Joe cleared his throat. “What about you? Going back to finish that Ivy League education?”

David tried not to grimace, but he must have paused too long or given himself away, because Joe snorted and said, “Forget I even asked.”

 _No, it’s not like that_ , David wanted to say. But it was almost exactly like that. He just wanted a few more days of this before whatever came next fell on top of him. He’d have the rest of his life to be miserable, why start it any sooner?

 

 

In total, the bus took about thirty-six hours to get from San Antonio to Los Angeles. It was the longest stretch that David had ever been on a bus, and even with stops every three hours or so (when Joe and David were awake, longer when they slept through a stop) to move around and get some food, David was sick of the rolling scenery and the tight space. By the time the bus rolled into Los Angeles, the downtown skyscrapers cuing their arrival, David half felt like he’d been riding on buses for his entire life.

David and Joe waited until most of the people had shuffled down the aisle of the bus—most people in a crush to get out and into the open air. Joe stood up first and then extended a hand to David. David took it without thinking, Joe’s hand warm against his own and they both stood there for a moment too long before Joe hurriedly turned and pulled down David’s bag, passing it over, and then his own.

They both stretched when they got off, enjoying the feeling of freedom and space. All around them, passengers streamed past—clothes wrinkled and bags held tightly as they all navigated the crowded space.

Surprisingly, the terminal was as busy as David had ever seen in New York or back east. Even though it was almost one o’clock in the morning, buses were still coming in, passengers unloading into the station without a second glance. Joe looked over at David with an expression that said, _Can you believe these people_? David just shrugged. “Guess we’re back in big cities now,” he said.

They made their way through the terminal, passing civilians and fellow soldiers freshly arrived or waiting around to catch buses. David would have hazarded a guess that these soldiers were coming from the South Pacific theatre, now waiting for their buses to go out to send them in the opposite trajectory of David and Joe. It felt a little weird to be on the opposite end of traveling—strung out from bus rides, exhausted from the road—like they were seeing the past versions of themselves.

David and Joe walked outside, the streetlights dim and still blacked out, and although the streets weren’t as busy as New York’s, they were busy enough. They went to the first hotel that they saw—just half a block away on Main, only to be informed by the harried-looking clerk that all of the rooms were booked for the night. He recommended another hotel, a block away, which also turned out to be full. Apparently, Los Angeles was filled with servicemen making their way home, and they’d all managed to get lodgings before Joe and David arrived.

Eventually, at the sixth hotel, now several blocks away from the bus station, the clerk told them the hotel had space. “But,” he said apologetically, “it’s only in our communal rooms.”

David looked over at Joe, who looked displeased, to say the least. “Yes, that’s fine,” David said before Joe could object vociferously. Joe glared at David as he filled out the registry, but David ignored him, exhausted enough that he just wanted to fall asleep in the first bed that he saw.

 

 

David had spent almost every minute of every day of the last three years constantly in the presence of many other men. Privacy didn’t exist didn’t exist in the army, and yet as David and Joe were quietly shown to the room they’d be staying in—four sets of bunk beds neatly arranged and two of them already occupied with sleeping servicemen—David felt acutely aware of the other men in the room. For one moment, David could almost see the men waking up and looking at them and just _knowing_ , even though there was nothing that could have given it away.

If Joe had the same concern, he didn’t show it. He changed quickly and easily climbed up into the top bunk in the empty bed. David waited a long second before changing, trying to tell himself that he’d done this a million times before. Why should this be any different? But long after Joe’s breath evened out on the bunk above him, David stared up at the top bunk and wished that they’d never come to Los Angeles.

That night, David slept uneasily, half panicked dreams where Joe had disappeared in the middle of the night, stealing away into the depths of Los Angeles and leaving David behind. David kept waking up—or dreaming that he was waking up—to check that Joe was still there, up above him, until David couldn’t take it anymore.

Eventually David sat up, panic and stress receding into the night. He knew that there was going to be no more sleeping that night. David was tired, but there were some things worse than being tired.

 

 

The next morning, Joe woke up energized with eyes blazing of determination. Determination to do what? David supposed that, as always was the question.

“So I figure that we can start with the beach,” Joe said as they gathered up their bags. “That’s what the sister said—that Myers always wanted to leave near the beach.”

“It’s got to be a thirty plus mile stretch,” David said.

“You’re telling me that you haven’t walked thirty miles before?” Joe said.

“Fine,” David said tiredly. He’d barely managed to catch a few hours of sleep and already a headache was starting to pound at his temples. The hotel clerk on the dayshift directed them to a diner just down the street where they could get breakfast, and then to the nearest Pacific Electric stop.

Outside, it was sunny, almost obnoxiously so, and David squinted up at the buildings around—all of them had clean white lines and sharp corners, with only the occasional brick building with billboards between them. The streets were already busy with people, but the recommended diner was blessedly quiet inside and a waitress seated David and Joe in one of the back corners.

Joe ordered eggs and toast, easy and open as he joked with the waitress. David didn’t have much of an appetite; instead he just ordered a coffee, hoping that it would settle his headache.

 

 

It was warm for November, at least David felt like it was, and he took off his jacket before he sweated through it. When he pointed this out to one of the young women on the electric car out to Santa Monica, she informed him that this weather was normal.

“Normal?” David said. “It’s got to be in the seventies.”

The woman laughed. “New to Los Angeles? Wait until you get a week in the 80s in January.”

David didn’t correct her. She was tall and curvy, dark hair gently curling as it fell over her shoulders. Easy on the eyes. So David let her tell him all about Los Angeles even though he’d likely only be there for a few days, especially for the sense of satisfaction of Joe glaring daggers at him beyond the woman’s back.

David’s headache built up the farther west they got, the noise from the crowd and the station announcements blurring together with the constant question of _why_. Why was he out here? Why was he listening to some stranger chat to him about a city that he would never be in again? Why?

But there wasn’t anything that he could do about it, so he kept listening and nodding in all the right places, aware of where Joe was sitting and tracking their progress towards the coast on the map on the wall inside the car.

When the electric car driver announced that they were pulling into Santa Monica, end of the line, David felt all of the stress coalesce into something leaden in the bottom of his stomach. For a moment, as he watched everyone walk off the bus, he thought that he might be sick. Only Joe poking his head back inside, a quizzical look on his face, got David to start walking and he forced a smile onto his face as he met Joe outside.

And yet, all of the existential worry, the entire mess inside of him, came to a screeching halt when David turned around to actually see Santa Monica spread out. There for the taking.

Right in front of them was a beach paradise, a long boardwalk leading up to a pier, populated with a host of amusement park rides. Even more enticing were the expanse of sand and shimmering ocean, almost close enough for him to touch. It was largely empty—most people were likely at work or school and it almost made the beach feel secluded.

For a long moment, David wanted nothing more to bury his feet in the sand, feel the sand in between his toes and the water against his ankles. Suddenly, he thought, _What the hell_ , and decided to go for it.

“I’ll be right back,” David said to Joe and took off before he could say anything. Joe called something after him, but it was garbled in the wind, and David didn’t bother to turn back. Once the asphalt started turning to sand, he slowed down long enough to untie his shoes, pull off his socks and roll up his pants. The sand immediately went everywhere, warming up his feet, kicking up behind David as he ran. When he got to the edge of the sand and water, he walked down far enough on the hard-packed sand so that the breaking waves gently rolled up to cover his toes. It was heaven.

After a few minutes, David heard someone approaching. He kept his eyes trained on the horizon, even when Joe stepped into his peripheral vision. Joe came close enough that David could feel Joe’s arm almost touching his own.

“Maybe Los Angeles isn’t so bad,” David allowed and Joe leaned his head back and laughed, straight from the belly, and it made David laugh as well.

They stood there for a long moment, just smiling at each other, and the knot inside David’s stomach uncoiled enough to breathe a little more deeply. When David didn’t think he could handle anymore, he took advantage of an incoming wave to reach down and splash Joe.

There was barely any spray, but Joe got that familiar competitive look on his face. “Oh, you’re going to wish you’d never done that,” he said, but David just splashed him more, leaving Joe sputtering.

They both dropped their bags then, chasing each along the beach front. There must have been other beach-goers, but it felt like there was just the two of them, and David wished he had a camera to record the moment.

 

 

Eventually they ran out of energy and trudged back up to the boardwalk, half covered in wet sand and sticky in uncomfortable places, but David didn’t regret any of it. They waited until their feet were dry enough in order to brush off most of the sand and get their shoes back on. They didn’t even look semi-respectable—shirts and pants wrinkled, hair sticking up in odd directions, but at least they wouldn’t get thrown off of the bus heading up Pacific Coast Highway.

They paid the fare for the trip out to Malibu and boarded the bus. They quickly found seats up front on the left-side of the bus, wedging together against the plastic seats so that they could look out towards the ocean. David took everything in eagerly as the bus made its way up Pacific Coast Highway, passing smatterings of small houses and beach shacks near the road and leading up into the brush-covered hills heading inland.

After twenty minutes the bus dropped them off at the Malibu Beach Colony, next to a small, one-story building with adobe-curved tiles on the roof in contrast to the bright white-painted walls and large windows of the building facing the road. A large signing proclaimed “MALIBU BEACH,” and a second vertical one read “CAFE”. It seemed as good a place as any to start.

The inside of the inn was shaded and cool, adobe floors that matched the roof. There was a small group of women sitting at one of the tables in the foyer, who looked up at Joe and David’s arrival before going back to their conversation. An older woman was at the front desk, her grey-brown hair tied back into a low bun.

“How may I help you?” she asked. David looked at Joe, wondering how he planned to go about this.

“We’re trying to find our friend, ma’am,” Joe said, a sheepish smile on his face that David knew must have been studied, but appeared genuine. It was surprisingly impressive. “We’ve just been discharged and had planned to meet up with him, but we’re not from the area.”

“Of course,” the woman said, her face instantly all sympathy and smiles. “What is your friend’s name?”

“William Myers,” Joe said. “He probably just moved back after being discharged himself.”

The woman made a hmming noise and scrunched her face up as she thought. “Could you describe him?” she asked finally. “I’m afraid that name isn’t ringing any bells. We’ve had a lot of people coming through here over the past few weeks as people return home.”

“Of course,” Joe said. “Actually, I have a photograph of him.” He pulled out the picture that Virginia had given them.

The woman took a close look at it and then shook her head. “I’m afraid that I haven’t seen him. Would you like me to write down a message in case he comes through?”

“That’s alright,” Joe said, still maintaining his charming demeanor. “We have an old buddy that we can call who can probably track him down.”

“Alright,” the woman said, smiling as Joe and David picked up their bags again to head out. “You boys take care.”

When they stepped outside, David looked to Joe. “South?” he said. Joe brought his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun and looked down the road winding north for about half a mile before the coast bent in and it disappeared from sight. Not much appeared to be there—just a few houses off the road and leading into the canyon east.

“South,” Joe agreed, so south they went.

For the next few miles, there was only the occasional small stand or hastily slapped together shack abutting the beach, each promising food but appearing to be closed up. Joe followed up at each of the open ones, although David couldn’t imagine why a new arrival would visit a beach concession as their first order of business, apparently Joe had decided to take a very thorough approach.

When they started to push back into the edge of Santa Monica near late afternoon, Joe’s plan became clearer as they stopped in at grocery stores and gas stations. In all of them, the bald man with the heavy accent or the young woman, hair perfectly coiffed, or the teenager chewing gum, looked apologetic as their eyes looked over William’s picture with no glimmer of recognition.

David could see each rejection grating on Joe, and for the first half of the day, it came as a physical relief to David. But at some indeterminable point in the afternoon, each “no” started to wear him down as well, which didn’t make any sense. Each “no” was one step closer to Joe seeing reason. Each “no” meant that it was a little less likely that they would ever find Mroz, and then both David and Joe could move on. But the rationality of it didn’t seem to affect the ball of stress in David. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.

But, eventually they had to concede temporary defeat—whatever Joe may have wanted, they couldn’t investigate all day and all night. When the sun finally started setting, they had made it to edge of Venice Beach. Joe looked out at the sunset, barely seeing the riot of color in front of him as he scanned for open businesses.

“Time to call it a night,” David said. Joe glared at him, but David held his gaze. “Most places will be closing anyways. We may as well also get some food and rest. I wouldn’t say no to a real bed after thirty-six hours in a tin can.”

“Fine,” Joe said. “Fine. Let’s find a place.”

 

 

Down a street with an assortment of small houses and dilapidated mom and pop stores, they found a small hotel for travelers, vacancy sign bright red in the window.

The owner was an older man, tanned, who showed them upstairs to one of the rooms with twin beds and introduced himself as Gerald. “Are you sure that you boys don’t want to get two rooms? I could give you a good price,” he said.

David felt his heart leap into his throat. It wasn’t like Gerald could know, but maybe he had and—

“Thank you, but we’re fine,” Joe said abruptly and pushed past Gerald into the room.

David gave Gerald an apologetic look. “Sorry, it’s been a long day of traveling,” he said.

“Of course,” Gerald said, good-natured about it. “He probably hasn’t eaten either—he looks like a cranky one.”

The surprise of it made David laugh hard enough to take his breath away. “Yeah,” he said when he could breathe again. “Joe does get pretty unhappy when he hasn’t eaten.”

“Well, I recommend Martha’s down the street,” Gerald said. “Good food, reasonably priced. Open until about nine or so. There’s also the bar on Main Street, but it’s a bit of a walk. It’ll be open later, though.”

“Thanks,” David said, and shook Gerald’s hand before ducking into the room.

It was small, with two beds on the opposite ends of the room, with just a few feet of space in between them. The bathroom was down the hall, to be shared with other potential guests, although there didn’t seem to be many.

“Hey,” David said, once he closed the door behind him and put his bag onto the bed that Joe hadn’t claimed. He opened his mouth to suggest that maybe it wasn’t in their best interest to be abrasive to the proprietors of where they boarded—no need to draw attention to themselves. But Joe glared at him fiercely enough that he half-felt like Joe could read his mind. “Let’s go get some dinner,” David finished lamely.

Joe stared at him suspiciously, but when David didn’t say anything else, he minutely relaxed. The fight was still there, just dormant. “Alright,” Joe said, and stood up slowly. He walked over to David and stood close enough that David had to fight to keep his hands by his side. Joe reached out to grab David’s shoulder and he let his hand rest there. David felt himself leaning in, ever so slightly, Joe’s gravity drawing him closer.

Eventually there was a loud bang from the floor above and David reluctantly moved back. “Dinner?” he said.

“Yeah,” Joe said. “Yeah.”

 

 

Both David and Joe were in a drinking mood, so they went and found the bar on Main Street that Gerald had recommended; a real hole in the wall, but at least they had whiskey and some chicken. With Joe pressed up against him in the corner booth, David tried to ignore the undercurrent of _want_ beneath his skin or the way that Joe’s hand had found its way to David’s knee and was resting there, torturing him.

They didn’t talk much during dinner, trying to avoid the weight between them, until Joe brought up baseball for the fifth time and David couldn’t take it anymore.

“What are you going to do if you find him?” David asked.

“What?”

“Mroz. What are you going to do?” David asked. Beneath the surface, he could see the frustration and resentment simmering under Joe’s skin. They’d left the war physically and David had thought that meant they were leaving the war behind. But, even though they were on American soil, David couldn’t shake Berchtesgaden, and, whatever demons Joe had picked up from the war, Joe sure as hell hadn’t shaken them. David couldn’t read Joe’s mind, but he did know, for better or for worse, what Joe was capable of and what David was not.

It was too much—the _want_ for Joe but the fear for Joe and what he might do. David wished he could pick one or the other—love Joe or hate Joe. But there didn’t seem to be much luck in that.

Joe didn’t answer the question. Finally, David closed his eyes, counted to five and then opened his eyes and motioned the bartender over. “A double, please,” he said.

 

 

They got back to the hotel in the early hours of the morning, Joe having to sling his arm around David’s shoulders to prevent him from wandering down to the beach.

“I just want to see the ocean in the moonlight,” David said. He knew it would be so beautiful—he just wanted to see it once.

“Web, you are not tracking sand into every last corner of our room,” Joe said, but he sounded amused or fond, or maybe he was warm against David—it was all blurring together.

When they got back to the room, tiptoeing through the hallway in an attempt to not be any more of a disruption than necessary, David tried to take off his shoes, but someone had done the shoelaces all wrong and his fingers couldn’t seem to follow the proper order.

Eventually Joe came over and sighed, pushing David’s hands out of the way and managing to take off David’s shoes one-handed. David took the opportunity for what it was and flopped back onto the bed, spreading his arms out. He felt ready to go to bed just like that—in his clothes, legs hanging off the bed. “Come on, Web, I need a little help here” Joe said as he tried to gently pull off David’s pants. David obligingly lifted his hips and let Joe slowly take his pants off before David pulled his shirt over his head. Free of all sartorial concerns, David rolled over fully onto the bed and closed his eyes.

There was more movement in the room, but he was starting to feel drowsy and it all felt so far away, until Joe said quietly. “Screw this, Web, your bed looks more comfortable,” and pushed David over until there was enough room for him as well. And then David was asleep.

 

 

The next morning, David woke up, warm and hazy, to Joe curled around him. Joe had thrown his good arm over David’s chest and his face was pressed next to David’s neck, his stubble rough but welcome on David’s skin.

It was too bright for David to go back to sleep, but he felt no need to get up or move from the warm bed. Instead, he closed his eyes and listened to Joe breathe in and out. Some indeterminate amount of time later, Joe’s breath went uneven and he tensed up around David. David could pinpoint the moment that Joe woke up, because he moved back ever so slightly to evaluate the situation before he relaxed again.

David expected Joe to get David out of bed, back on his insane crusade, but for a long time, Joe didn’t do anything, just kept his face buried in the crook of David’s neck. David didn’t move either, letting himself have this moment.

Slowly, Joe moved his face up, until his lips found the sensitive place right behind David’s ear. He kissed the warm skin there gently and it made David shiver, so he turned and looked at Joe. They stared at each other for a long moment before Joe leaned in and kissed David.

They kissed for a while, trading languid kisses, heated but with little urgency, until David was fully hard and he could feel Joe hard against his thigh. David rolled himself over Joe and began to work his way down Joe’s neck, gently running his teeth over the tendons and drawing out cut-off sounds from Joe.

Joe’s left arm was pressed in tightly in its sling, so David made sure to be careful as he sat back and pulled off his own boxers and then Joe’s. David braced himself on his knees, bracketing Joe’s hips and then brought both of their cocks together, slowly rubbing both of them together in his hand.

It took everything in David’s willpower to not make any loud noises at that and Joe’s right hand immediately went up to cover his mouth. David kept moving, the friction deliciously good, and Joe managed to move his hand long enough to say “Oh my god, David,” before he cursed loudly and put his forearm into his mouth to keep quiet.

Neither of them lasted very long, Joe tensing up and moaning around his arm before coming over his stomach. David came right afterwards, adding to the mess, before slumping down on the bed and panting loudly.

“Unh,” Joe said.

“Yeah,” David agreed. Joe made some half-hearted comment about cleaning up, but neither of them made a move and David felt himself dozing off, hoping against hope that he didn’t have to move forever.

Eventually, a loud series of car horns startled him into sitting up and then Joe rose up next to him, out of bed before David could stop him.

 

 

They paid for another night at the front desk with Gerald and left their bags in the room. When they stepped outside, the sun was starting to burn off the cloudy marine layer, and David could feel the hint of warmth through his jacket.

The day was like the day before—plenty of gas stations and grocery stores and motels to visit and ask questions in. Most of the people that they met were friendly, eager to help two newly returned servicemen, but occasionally they came across the surly, overtired ones that glared at Joe and David with suspicious eyes and barely glanced at the photograph that Joe pulled out.

They spent their day making their way through the Marina, Mar Vista and Playa Del Rey before turning back for the evening. That night, Joe snuck into David’s bed after they turned the lights out and neither of them said anything for a long time. Finally, David turned onto his side and moved slightly closer to Joe. That was all the encouragement that Joe needed, apparently, as he leaned in close to press a kiss to the back of David’s neck. Then David turned, meeting Joe. Their shirts and boxers were off before David could even count to ten and when they finished, the two of them fell asleep, bare skin against bare skin.

 

 

The next day was the South Bay. They had no luck in El Segundo, Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach and Joe returned to the hotel with a barely simmering rage, restlessly turning throughout the night, keeping David up.

 

 

The day after that, a Friday of all days, they got lucky. A middle-aged woman running a small drugstore a few blocks away from Redondo Beach pier took a close look at the photograph and frowned.

“Yes, I have seen your friend,” she said and closed her eyes in memory. “Wiry, tall, looks like he could do with a few extra meals?”

David’s breath caught in his throat, and for one long exhale, he wanted the moment unspooled and cut off as if it were a piece of film to be thrown away. But Joe leaned forward, his whole body snapped to attention like a hunting hound. “Yes, that’s him,” Joe said, his voice tight with control. “Do you know where we can find him?”

The woman gave them an apologetic smile as she said that she didn’t know. “He just came by to buy soap,” the woman said. “I’m afraid that I didn’t get any other information from him, although your friend was very polite.”

“Thank you again, ma’am,” Joe said and herded David outside. “We’ve found him.”

“We haven’t actually found anyone,” David said automatically, a feeling of distant numbness beginning to make its way down his back.

“We know he’s close,” Joe amended. “Web, we know he’s got to be close by if he was buying those kinds of basics.”

“He could have just been restocking before he moved on,” David said.

“But he’s hasn’t,” Joe said, utter conviction.

David held out hope that Myers had moved on from Redondo Beach for about twenty minutes, until they came to a grocery store where the couple who owned it recognized Myers as well. He’d come in a few times that week. Even worse, they directed David and Joe to a nearby hotel, as well as apartment rentals where they thought that Myers could have been staying.

“Will?” the older proprietress said when they showed her the photograph. Her smile lit up her tanned and wrinkled face. “Yes, he rented one of my smaller apartments. First time seeing the Pacific! Such a nice and polite boy, I do hope that he stays. And I’m sure that he’ll be delighted that you have come to see him. You like me to go get him?”

“Actually,” David cut in smoothly. “Can you tell us where he is? We’d like to surprise him.”

The woman chuckled fondly. “Of course, I know how you young people are.”

 _You have no idea,_ David thought as he reached out to take the piece of paper with the address on it, hating himself for smiling back at her.

 

 

David wanted to just call the police and be done with it. “Yeah,” Joe said, scoffing. “And what are we going to tell the police? We know where a known associate of Lieutenant Vincent Mroz is. What are they going to do with that? Absolutely nothing. Less than nothing.”

“What are you going to do?” David asked. “Do you think he’s just going to tell you where his friend is? Are you going to torture him for information? This isn’t the war. We can’t just go around threatening and shooting people when they don’t tell us what we want to know.”

“So that’s it, just giving up?” Joe said. “Fine, do whatever you want. I’m going to be man enough to go up and knock on his door.” Joe grabbed the piece of paper and turned.

“Fine,” David said, hating himself even more, and grabbed the paper back. “We’ll go. You’re going in the wrong direction.”

It was about a ten-minute walk past the town’s main street, the ocean and pier visible on their right. They walked to a set of buildings clumped together, all in that same Californian style with adobe, low-pitched roofs and stucco walls. A small arcade led to an inner courtyard, and there David and Joe found stairs leading them up to the third floor.

Every step forward felt like a step closer to an enormous mistake, but it was too late to turn back now. So, David pushed forward, his mouth filling up with ash. When they finally stood in front of a door bearing the inscription “3C”, Joe took a deep breath and knocked hard on the door.

David heard movement inside, and his stomach sank further as the sound came closer. Through the glazed window, he could make out someone’s feet—presumably Myers’—bare and hesitating as they, too, approached the door.

After a small eternity, the door swung open to reveal William Myers, all six foot three and dark-haired as David remembered him. Myers, on the other hand, stopped short, surprise and—fear?—flashing on his face before his face went tight and unreadable.

“Do I know you?” Myers asked, even though he clearly did.

Joe started talking, building up some story that David only half paid attention to, because he was looking in to the apartment. Myers was trying to hide the rest of the apartment from view, but his body was angled towards Joe, so David could see in past him. There were two sets of shoes next to the door, a small living room and kitchenette to the far right, a bedroom directly behind Myers and presumable a bathroom off to the side.

The last piece slot into place—David hadn’t wanted to believe it or maybe it just hit too close to home, but either way, there was no denying what he now knew for fact.

“No, I’m afraid that I haven’t seen Mroz since we were routed back to the States,” Myers said, a forced smile on his face.

“Is that so?” Joe said. “You haven’t heard from him at all after what he did to Marty Goux?”

Myers held Joe’s eye. “That’s correct.”

“Then why do you have shoes for two different men here?” Joe asked, and pointed to the shoes next to the door. Myers turned and looked, and Joe used the momentary diversion of attention to push the door back and get into the apartment. “Those shoes are two very different sizes,” Joe said. “Where’s Mroz?”

“I don’t know,” Myers said, but his voice now held a thread of fear in it.

“That’s fine,” Joe said casually. “I’ll just call up the police and let them sort this all out.”

“No, wait,” Myers said, eyes flicking from Joe to David and back. “Just let me—please, you have to understand—”

“Understand what?” Joe said, and he had that dangerous look in his eyes. “That your friend here killed my friend? In cold blood?”

“No, it wasn’t like that,” Myers said.

“That you’re now harboring a fugitive from the law?” Joe said. “I can’t imagine that the police and army will think that looks good.”

Myers’ hands were clenched in fists, but he didn’t say anything in response to Joe. Then, out of nowhere, the bedroom door opened behind Myers. For a long moment, David felt horribly exposed, with no military-issued gun in his hand or on his person; but when Mroz stepped out, his hands were empty.

“It’s okay, Will,” Mroz said. Joe was so surprised that his face had gone white and still.

“I should kill you where you stand,” he said.

Mroz looked at Joe, his face fighting a battle between determination and fear. “I didn’t—I didn’t—I never wanted to kill him,” he said. “It’s just that—”

“Goux spent the majority of the war blackmailing Vince,” Myers said angrily and he stepped in front of Mroz, putting himself between Mroz and Joe.

Maybe Joe hadn’t really put two and two together prior to that or maybe he just hadn’t wanted to believe it, but David saw the exact moment that Joe understood the nature of Mroz and Myers relationship. Joe’s eyes went wide and shock flickered across his face before he controlled himself.

“Three years of payments and threats and when we were finally set to be discharged, Goux said that he was going to tell the army what Vince really was. It would have destroyed Vince’s life. And mine as well,” Myers said.

“And that makes it okay to kill a man?” Joe asked and David could hear the naked emotion underneath the words.

Mroz looked miserable, dark purple circles under his eyes, and there was a sense of bleakness about him—as if he’d already accepted Joe’s sentence. He was willing to go to his fate.

Suddenly, Joe pulled something out of his pack. A gun—from where, David had no clue, but it was big in Joe’s hands. It was like the air had been sucked out of the room—everything went quiet.

“You’d have to kill us both,” Myers said, and this time, there was no fear in his voice. Just determination.

“No, Joe,” David said. Joe looked at him, his face unreadable. “There is no justice that we will be able to find here,” David said.

“There would be justice in killing Goux’s killer,” Joe said but he kept looking down at the two pairs of shoes, something about them keeping his attention.

A man was the sum of his convictions, David thought to himself. He himself might not have had many convictions—he wasn’t sure who he was most mornings, and his sense of self had eroded constantly since the start of the war. But he knew that he wasn’t someone who would stand here and let someone else die for no good reason. He also knew, deep down, that this wasn’t Joe. Maybe this was who Joe believed needed to be. And yet David saw the slight shake in his hand that betrayed that distinction. David couldn’t let Joe do this to himself.

“Joe,” David said. “Don’t do this.”

“I should,” Joe said. “Everything says that I should. This man has killed on of our own. Fuck, the two of them are living in—” Joe couldn’t even get the word out, but David could hear all of Joe’s disgust and fear and David winced.

“And what’s so wrong with that?” David asked quietly.

“It’s—it’s not right,” Joe said.

“You don’t get to decide that,” David said.

“Oh and you do?” Joe said. “You get to say that these two—” and Joe gestured wildly at Mroz and Myers.

After long loud seconds of silence, Joe flicked his eyes back to Mroz and Myers. “Fuck,” Joe said feelingly. “Fuck!” He punched one hand hard against the wall, leaving a small dent and Joe could make out little incisions rapidly turning red when Joe pulled his hand away.

“Joe,” David tried, but Joe hit the wall again and then turned for the door. David automatically went to follow him before looking back at Mroz and Myers, still frozen.

David wondered when they’d met during the war. Had they known from the first meeting? Had it been gradual and invisible until it wasn’t? Had Mroz come to Myers early in the morning after Goux had been killed and together, they had decided to run away to here, of all places? Or had this always been the plan?

“Here,” David said, pulling Mroz’s letters out of his knapsack and placing them on the side table near the front door. “And Myers, you should write your sister.”

He left before they could give any response.

 

 

David caught up with Joe half a block away, Joe moving quickly, almost at a run. “Joe,” David said, reaching out a hand that Joe instantly shook off. “Stop, wait a second.”

“God damn it,” Joe said, disgust evident. “Wait for what? Wait to fuck things up all over again? I’ve already let my buddy down in the worst way possible—Mroz was standing right in front of me. And Myers too--and I had the chance to do something and instead I left, like a coward.”

“You really think that was you being a coward?” David said. “You are a lot of things, Joseph Liebgott, but you’re not a coward. Compassion isn’t cowardice.”

“How would you know?” Joe yelled, turning towards David. “Because you’re the authority on what it means to be brave? And the two of them—there together. Just like—just like—”

He spread his arms out trying to convey what he clearly couldn’t even manage to put into words. Whatever Joe expected to see from David, he evidentially couldn’t find it, because Joe suddenly looked even more hurt. “You knew,” Joe said and it wasn’t a question.

“I suspected,” David corrected, but Joe didn’t take that any better.

“And you never said anything to me about it?” Joe said. “You didn’t think that was something I should know?”

“Because you were so forthcoming?” David said. “What were you and Goux arguing about that night? What has this trip really been about? Was it just an excuse to kill someone—go on one last crazy mission?”

“Oh, like you’re one to talk. What do you want from me anyways, huh? Staring at me with those big dumb cow eyes,” Joe said. David stiffened. “Why are you even out here? Why don’t you go home and stop following me around?”

“I would say that I came out here to stop you from doing something stupid,” David said angrily, spitting the words out as fast as they could come. “But it’s clear that no amount of help will stop you from that.”

“Yeah?” Joe said. “You want to know what stupid is? It’s when someone is too afraid to think about what’s next that they follow an idiot around. I may be stupid, but at least I’m facing reality instead of hiding from it.”  

“You think this is reality? This asinine quest? You know what?” David said. “Go fuck yourself. Do whatever the hell you want.” Before Joe could say anything, David turned and walked off in the opposite direction.

He made it as far as the dingy phone booth down the next block where he opened up the door to step inside. It was cool and quiet in the phone booth and David laid his head back against the glass. He felt like someone had dug out half his chest, exposing everything inside, and then shoved a grenade in it.

He wasn’t sure how long he spent in the phone booth, just breathing in and out, but eventually, David reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. Slowly, he put in a quarter, then another, until all the change in his pocket was gone, and then pressed zero. An operator spoke coolly into his ear.

“I would like to place a long distance call to New York, Cortland 267,” David said, feeling far away from himself.

“This may take some time,” the operator cautioned.

“That’s fine,” David said. He had all the time in the world.

 

 

When his mother answered the line, David could also hear Myers’ mother’s voice, overlapping until the two became one.

“Hello, Mother,” David said.

There was a puff of air as surprise from the other end but then his mother smoothly said, “David, why are you calling from Los Angeles?”

“It’s—it’s a long story,” David said. “But I’m coming home.”

His mother allowed herself a small sigh of relief. “Good. That’s excellent to hear—we’ve all been looking forward to your return. Your father will be pleased to know that you’re on your way.”

“Yes,” David said and left it at that. “I’ll send a telegram with my information.”

“I look forward to it,” she said and then they both fell silent. David felt like the worst son—he couldn’t even make conversation with his mother after a three year absence. Meanwhile, he could yell at Joe until the cows came home.

“Well, David, I’m afraid that I have to get ready for a lunch, but I’ll expect you in a few days. Please send a wire if you need anything along the way.”

“Of course,” David said. “Goodbye.” And then she was gone, back into the distance.

David felt curiously blank as he left the phone booth, and there was a careful distance that he kept in his mind from the morning onwards. He didn’t think about Myers, he didn’t think about Mroz and he definitely didn’t think about Joe. Instead, David walked back down the street towards the pier.

His stomach growled, which probably meant that he should eat. He bought a hotdog from a little shop off of the pier connecting the street and then walked down the pier itself, a semi-circle curling around the beach.

When he got off the pier, he should have turned back towards the rail line, but his feet headed north and he kept walking along the strip of pavement bordering the beach, north and south as far as the eye could see. The big and bright buildings of Redondo Beach faded into smaller beach houses and open land in Hermosa Beach, with its own small pier, and then eventually into Manhattan Beach. Sand dunes spread out in front of him, lit up by the sun setting opposite them, a riot of orange and reds that David stopped to watch.

Right before the sun disappeared beneath the horizon, David deliberately turned and headed up the small downtown area to get to the rail line. At the station, he dutifully bought a ticket and waited for the next north-bound train to appear.

 

 

On the way back, David finally forced himself to start facing facts and making concrete plans. He could catch a train out of Union Station tomorrow morning, so he’d have to find a place to stay for the night. Their hotel would probably have an extra room, but running into Joe after leaving was unthinkable, even hypothetically. Just the thought of Joe was like a painful shower—hot and cold simultaneously—and David felt horrified at everything that he’d—they’d done.

Only slightly more enjoyable was the thought of going back home. He would probably return to Harvard—either for the spring semester or maybe the fall. His dad had always made it clear that David would be expected to do something that he deemed worthwhile—probably law or business. And there it was; just like before the war, David’s life stretched out in front of him: college, then business, a pretty young wife from the same type of upbringing, shortly followed by a gaggle of young children.

It was all there, laid out and so boring that David wanted to throw up. And he couldn’t stop it, even if he wanted to. Before the war, it had been tolerable, at least. Now…

It had been unrealistic, but he had let himself believe that by being on this trip, he was circumventing the forces of fate at work, and, for a while, just floating on the wind. With Joe, even on their ill-thought mission, it had seemed worthwhile. Fun, even.

But Joe had made his thoughts clear, and as boring as life in New York seemed, it also appeared to be infinitely less painful. _A saving grace_ , David thought, even if it felt like anything but.

 

 

The walk from the Venice station to the hotel took twenty minutes, and David spent the entire time hoping that Joe wasn’t there. But of course, as he walked down the hallway he saw light spilling out from underneath the doorway. For a long minute, he considered just turning and walking away. He could go to a bank tomorrow morning and have them wire New York for funds—leave everything behind. The thought of seeing Joe again, of having his humiliation freshly painted all over, was almost too much. But maybe, David thought, it would be even worse to take the coward’s way out.

So David squared his shoulders, took a deep breath and walked up to the door. He unlocked the door and pushed it open in time to see Joe scrambling up from his bed—unused until now, and that small thought hurt—at David’s entrance.

For a long moment, they just stared at each other, Joe’s eyes big. “David,” Joe said eventually and he sounded guilty and terrified.

“Joe,” David acknowledged.

“I’m sorry,” Joe said.

“Don’t,” David said. “Please don’t.”

“No, I have to,” Joe said, and he started speaking before David could get a word in edgewise. “I didn’t mean what I said earlier—any of it. I was angry at myself—angry at myself and Mroz—and I said a lot of things that I didn’t mean.”

“You did mean them,” David said.

“I didn’t,” Joe said. “I’ve wanted you here this entire time.”

“Or maybe it was easier to let me tag along, then to tell me to get lost,” David said.

“That’s not—” Joe said, his words starting to stumble. “That’s not it at all. You think that I would have just let someone that I didn’t like hang around? If I didn’t want you here, I would have ditched you at that first bus stop in Ohio. Or left on a bus without telling you back in Norfolk.”

It was true, David knew that it was true, but it almost hurt worse than if Joe had doubled down on his statement from earlier and told David to leave.

“Maybe it’s better this way,” David said. “I’ll go back home and you’ll go to yours.”

“Is that really what you think?” Joe said. “I’ve seen you talk about your family and your life back there. You’re excited about that as a bowl of curdled milk.”

“Yeah?” David said. “And you know me so well, right?”

“I do!” Joe said, starting to get angry now. “I served with you for three years all across Europe and now all across the US. I’ve seen you at your worst and you’ve seen me at mine. If that’s not knowing each other, then I don’t know what is.” Joe clenched his jaw and closed his eyes. Finally, as if it were dragged out of him, he said. “David, don’t go back. Stay here—stay with me.”

David couldn’t breathe, the air gone inside his chest. He wanted to say so much, ask Joe a million questions, but it was too intoxicating and dangerous, and so David just reached for his bag, and said, “I’m sorry.”

Somehow, David managed to make it to the front desk, where he asked the clerk to call him a cab. When the cab arrived, he climbed in the back, and when the cab driver asked where he was going, David couldn’t help but laugh a little as he thought, _I’m going away from the one person that I can most stand to be around_. The cab driver turned around and looked at him, confused, and David swallowed the rest of his laughter, and told him Union Station.

They drove for a while through quiet neighborhood streets until they reached one of the highways, and David decided to open up his pack—although it seemed useless. If he had left anything, it was as good as gone. But when he opened the pack, the first thing that he saw up on top was Joe’s deck of cards.

David started for a second at the shock of seeing it. Joe must have put it there—he never seemed to be without it otherwise. Slowly, carefully, David opened up the box. Right on top of the deck, Joe had placed an innocuous square of paper, neatly folded up. Apparently, Joe had known that whatever apology he could give, David would leave anyways. David wasn’t sure what to feel about that.

David spent the rest of the ride staring at the piece of paper, trying to muster up the courage to open it up. But when they pulled up to Union Station, David discovered that it didn’t even matter what was on the piece of paper because he couldn’t get out of the cab. His legs refused to move. And then he found himself laughing, almost hysterically. What was he thinking? What on earth was he thinking? Joe may have been crazy and rude and quick to give David shit, but at the end of the day, he was a good person. Or mostly a good person in the ways that it counted. And David liked him—really liked him. Maybe even loved him.  

“Excuse me,” David said to the driver who was looking a little concerned at the turn of events. The driver glanced back at David through the rearview mirror, eyes wary. “I’m sorry, but can you please turn around? I left something important behind.” As the driver nodded, muttering something unintelligible under his breath, and pulled out of the Union Station drop-off area, David unfolded the piece of paper. In scrawled cursive it just read, _I’m sorry_.

 

 

The ride back was quick, passing so briefly that David barely had enough time to collect his thoughts before the cab pulled up to the hotel. When David paid the cab driver, the driver looked over at David and asked, “Do you want me to wait?”

“No,” David said, unable to keep a smile off his face. “Thank you though.”

As the cab sped off into the night, David walked into the hotel. Gerald looked a little confused to see David again, but David ignored him and headed towards the dingy stairs up to the second floor. Keyless, David knocked on their door.

Joe opened it slowly, looking at David warily.

“Can I come in?” David asked.

“Depends,” Joe said. “You going to turn around and walk out? If so, I’d prefer that you didn’t waste my time.”

David repressed a smile. “Seems unlikely.”

Joe let in David, trying and largely failing to glare at David. But once Joe closed the door behind David, David reached out for Joe, dropping his bag on the floor. Joe reached back, as desperate as he was, and pushed David back against the wall. There was a light switch digging into David’s back as Joe kissed him, but it didn’t even matter, nothing mattered, nothing except Joe and the warmth of him against David.

 

 

Afterwards, as they lay half on top of each other in bed, Joe said, “I expect that you’ll want to go to one of those colleges or something.” David could have almost laughed at how unappealing Joe made the concept of higher education sound, but it was a good point. He might have decided that he didn’t want to back to New York. He still had to decide what to do instead.

“Hm,” David said thoughtfully. “I do want to go back to college. I wonder if I can just transfer to UCLA or Stanford or if I need to re-apply.”

Joe snorted. “College boy,” he said.

“What about you?” David said.

David felt Joe shrug. “I can do half a dozen jobs without thinking,” he said. “Barber, cab driver, work in a grocery or wait tables.” David heard the unsaid corollary: Joe could do anything almost anywhere. And he would do it anywhere that David wanted to be.

“I like Los Angeles,” David said. “Let’s try this for a bit.”

“Whatever you say, Web,” Joe said, in a tone that indicated he was humoring David, but he also reached out to find David’s hand and threaded their fingers together, anchoring David until he fell asleep.


End file.
